Greetings from Portsmouth, New Hampshire!

I write to you as folks from the Portsmouth office close out the 11th week of our work-from-home experience. That’s an astounding 74 days, which is longer than some pro- athletes ever spend at the highest level of their sport. That’s also longer than Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable,” Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” and Adele’s “Hello” spent at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The arrival of summer weather and a fast-approaching hiatus from exhausting online learning for kids and parents alike are among the reasons people are ready to get on with life as they know it. But we must face the reality that life at this very moment isn’t what we’ve known, and we really can’t get there with a snap of the fingers.

It’s not wrong to question whether your patience has grown thin during this time, but truth be told, we can all dig deeper to find more. And one important thing I was reminded of this week: The pandemic isn’t over just because we are bored.

Staying on the topic of patience, I’m happy to hear it’s paying off for the privacy pros I spoke with who found new jobs after being laid off at the outset of COVID-19. The brevity of these layoffs speaks to the resiliency and, to some degree, the growth of the privacy profession during the pandemic, which are notions I unpacked in a piece this week for The Privacy Advisor.

My piece was based in part off of results released this week from the EY-IAPP survey on privacy amid the pandemic. The survey features the input of 933 respondents on what has and hasn’t changed within the privacy space due to COVID-19. 

Falling under the same umbrella as my piece and the survey, IAPP Vice President and Chief Knowledge Officer Omer Tene put the COVID-19 paradigm in context, writing, “If you thought privacy was a growth issue in 2019, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

And for those of you interested in the EU data protection scene, I recommend checking out the IAPP’s content cluster on the EU General Data Protection Regulation’s 2-year anniversary. While it might not directly pertain to the U.S., privacy pros can grasp the GDPR’s peaks and valleys to this point and apply it to what could come down the road with potential federal U.S. privacy legislation.

Enjoy your weekend, friends.