The privacy profession is on an incredible growth curve across the world. Largely driven by rapid technological advancement and comprehensive privacy and data protection regulation, demands on the profession are steadily evolving in complexity and significance across industry sectors, both public and private.
Our mission at the IAPP is to define, promote and improve the privacy profession globally. Through the years, we’ve developed training, certification and publications while hosting conferences that allow you to learn from and connect with one another.
A few years back, increasing feedback from our members indicated the need for enterprisewide privacy training. Privacy professionals were seeking to train larger portions of their organization’s employees so they could learn the basics of privacy and data protection. That’s why in 2016, we rolled out Privacy Core, a first-of-its-kind training series for the non-privacy pro.
And for four years, that product has been and remains an incredible success. But over time, as the market for privacy training matured, companies specialized in workforce training also entered the ecosystem with a host of offerings.
At the same time, new demands on the privacy profession continue to flourish. As always, it’s incumbent upon us to meet those new demands as part of our mission to serve the privacy profession.
That’s why we here at the IAPP believe now is the time to reallocate and reinvest resources from Privacy Core to other offerings designed squarely for the privacy pro.
As part of that process, the IAPP has entered an agreement with OneTrust to sell Privacy Core’s e-learning platform. Existing licenses that have been sold by the IAPP will now be serviced by OneTrust.
We have carefully considered this transaction and are working closely with OneTrust to ensure the transfer of Privacy Core is seamless and that all the terms of the existing license agreements are fulfilled. For those of you holding Privacy Core licenses, you should experience no disruption in service whatsoever.
In recent months, the IAPP considered many options for the future of Privacy Core, but we think this agreement will allow us to place the many resources that went into Privacy Core on other essential components of our mission. We will use this opportunity to invest in new offerings tailored for privacy professionals. This includes our training, certifications, events, publications, research and so much more.
Privacy is increasingly being embedded into the foundational business operations of companies large and small across industry verticals. Data protection authorities in the EU are now fully enforcing the General Data Protection Regulation. Here in the U.S., we’re little more than a month away from implementation of the California Consumer Privacy Act, which puts more demands on the privacy obligations of businesses. If other states follow suit by drafting their own privacy laws — and some very likely will — we will see more pressure for a federal privacy law in the near future. Brazil now has a comprehensive national privacy law. India looks to table its own national legislation in the next year. Other countries around the globe — from those in Africa to Latin America and the Asia-Pacific — are also passing their own privacy and data protection laws.
Amid this complexity, it is the privacy pro who needs to mitigate risk, ensure compliance, demonstrate accountability, develop trust and work with regulators. That’s a lot of work!
So, our mission to serve you, the privacy professional, is full speed ahead. To do that, we will further focus our resources to facilitate up-to-date training, industry-leading certification, engaging events, robust research and timely publications. There’s lots to do, and we’re ready.