Data Privacy Day 2023: Events and Resources

Data Privacy Day, also known as Data Protection Day, originated in the United States in 2008, when the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and the Privacy Officer's Council (POC) declared January 28 as the day to raise awareness about the importance of protecting personal information. The date was chosen to honor the 1981 signing of Convention 108, the first legally binding international treaty dealing with privacy and data protection.

The holiday was first recognized in the United States and Canada but has since been adopted by many other countries, including many European Union member states. Data Privacy Day aims to educate individuals and organizations about the importance of protecting personal information, and to encourage them to take steps to secure their data. The goal is to empower individuals to take control of personal data and to encourage organizations to implement responsible data protection practices.

In celebration of Data Privacy Day 2023, we have compiled a list of events, resources, must-reads, and podcasts, along with recommendations of data privacy experts to follow.

Events to attend

World Bank Data Privacy Day 2023, January 25: The World Bank is hosting its fourth annual Data Privacy Day event, where experienced privacy leaders and experts can learn about current trends and provide insights on how organizations such as development institutions, governments, and private sectors can play a significant role in managing privacy risks.

The State of Privacy by ISACA, January 25: This webinar will explore the results of the third annual State of Privacy Survey, which surveyed more than 1,800 privacy professionals globally. It will cover information on staffing, budgets, awareness training, breaches, and privacy by design trends.

Data Privacy Day and 2023 Predictions by IAPP, January 25: An online webinar featuring data privacy professionals Elizabeth Denham (Baker McKenzie), Anna Gamvros (Norton Rose Fullbright), Faith Myers (McKesson Corporation) and Mikko Niva (Vodafone).

National Cybersecurity Alliance’s Data Privacy Week, January 22-28: An initiative led by the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) to raise awareness about online privacy. It is an extension of Data Protection Day in Europe, offering resources, guides, and events on privacy topics for individuals, data professionals, and organizations.

Privacy Day 2023 - Research for a Better Society, January 27: ESOMAR is hosting a webinar to examine the ethical duties of researchers in the collection and utilization of personal data. The speakers will talk about the negative impacts of mishandling data, the chance of bias, and the role of researchers in promoting principles of fairness and diversity.

Local Events by IAPP: Throughout January, the IAPP organizes KnowledgeNet chapters and local online and offline events in celebration of Data Privacy Day for privacy professionals to connect and network.

The Data Trifecta – Privacy, Security & Governance Race from Reactivity to Resilience,” January 31: This Dataversity webinar will explore how to create more opportunities with data by treating data governance, security and privacy as value centers. The speakers Joseph Sommer (EY), Awah Teh (Capital One), Steve Prestidge (Anonos), Gary LaFever (Anonos) will discuss recent research on data privacy, the most valuable use cases for enterprise data, and more.

Podcasts

The Privacy Advisor by IAPP: Features interviews between the privacy world's experts and IAPP’s Editorial Director Jedidiah Bracy.

Data Privacy Detective: Covers recent events and changes in data privacy, protection, and security, and provides guidance on how to safeguard your online identity and personal information.

DM Radio Podcast with Gary LaFever: A discussion on how to reimagine data privacy to create more strategic business value. Gary LaFever (Anonos) explains how dynamic digitization and technical controls reduce privacy risks but increase data utility.

The Data Diva Talks Privacy Podcast: A podcast hosted by Debbie Reynolds, known as "The Data Diva," features weekly conversations with industry leaders discussing data privacy for businesses.

Shifting Privacy Left: Focuses on the importance for businesses to incorporate privacy by design into their engineering, devops, and product development processes before releasing any code or products.

She Said Privacy/He Said Security Podcast: In this podcast, Jodi Daniels, the founder and CEO of Red Clover Advisors, a boutique data privacy consultancy, and Justin Daniels, a corporate M&A attorney representing technology businesses, discuss the impact of privacy and security on business in the 21st century.

Data Protection Breakfast Club: A legal podcast hosted by Andy Dale, General Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer at Alyce, and Pedro Pavón, Privacy & Data Policy at Meta. It features discussions with GCs, CPOs, product/marketing and policy leaders on how to navigate the technology ecosystem.

Serious Privacy: Features conversations with global privacy professionals. Listeners can gain insights into the opinions and perspectives of those who are dealing with the latest challenges in managing personal data.

Privacy Please: Covers best practices, interviews, belly laughs, and real stories about data privacy.

Life with GDPR: This podcast focuses on the ways that GDPR, data privacy and data protection impact business.

Pseudonymization Podcast: Timely discussions with industry experts about the requirements for and the benefits of Pseudonymization.

Privacy Pros: Features interviews with privacy professionals sharing tips, opinion and advice for a successful career in data protection.

Data Privacy and Security: Offers information about security and privacy risks and provides fresh insights into the impacts of exploiting these risks, supported by expert advice.

Data Privacy Detective: Offers advice on how to safeguard personal privacy, updates on government actions to protect or access personal data, and news of technological advancements that shape the digital world where our personal data is stored.

Cognizant Leadership and Innovation Podcast, “How anonymizing and extracting revenue from your data is the new water, not the new oil.” In this episode, Thomas F. Anglero of Cognizant and Gary LaFever of Anonos discuss the significance of collecting and leveraging value from data and how to do so lawfully and securely.

Research & guides

[technical] A Unified Framework for Quantifying Privacy Risk in Synthetic Data: This paper by privacy researchers Matteo Giomi, Franziska Boenisch, Christoph Wehmeyer, and Borbála Tasnádi, discusses the Anonymeter, a novel solution to empirically quantify privacy risks in synthetic datasets.

Emerging Tech: Top Use Cases for Tabular Synthetic Data: Gartner’s latest research on synthetic data market, predictions, and use cases. Includes recommendations for data, business, and product leaders.

Check these papers for more technical resources on synthetic data:

Business Impact Brief by 451 Research: Provides insights from the 451 Research's Voice of the Enterprise: Data & Analytics, Data-Driven Practices 2022 survey on the technical difficulties that are among the most significant hurdles organizations face in becoming more data-driven.

[technical] Will We Run Out of Data? An Analysis of the Limits of Scaling Datasets in Machine Learning: This study examines the increase in dataset sizes used for natural language processing and computer vision in machine learning. The findings suggest that the supply of high-quality language data will soon run out, likely before 2026.

ICO PETs Draft Guide: The draft guidance on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) explains the advantages and various types of PETs currently available and how they can aid organizations in complying with data protection laws.

[technical] Awesome-Privacy: A repository of research papers on differential privacy.

EDPS’s Paper on 10 Misunderstandings Related to Anonymization: This paper aims to bring attention to misconceptions about anonymization and encourage readers to verify claims about the technology rather than accepting them without question.

Journal of Data Protection and Privacy, Technical Controls That Protect Data When in Use and Prevent Misuse: The authors of the article argue that technical measures should be employed to protect data throughout its lifecycle, especially when the data is being used. They present Statutory Pseudonymization as a modern and legally compliant method for protecting data during use.

Pseudonymisation Techniques and Best Practices by ENISA: This report explores the fundamental concepts of pseudonymization and offers technical solutions that can aid its implementation in practice.

Online courses & lectures

Data Privacy: Foundations and Applications: This program advances core research on privacy and creates new partnerships between researchers working on theoretical aspects of data privacy and those engaged in areas of potential applications.

Data Privacy Training by IAPP: This training is for professional development and ANSI/ISO-accredited certification. It includes comprehensive courses covering legal, regulatory, governance, and operational matters.

Privacy in Statistics and Machine Learning: The course explores privacy and utility in machine learning and statistics, starting from the challenges facing straightforward solutions and moving on to rigorous state-of-the-art solutions based on differential privacy.

On-Demand Webinar Series by IAPP & Anonos:

How to Find the Norwegian Prime Minister in an "Anonymized" Contact Tracing Dataset (video starts at 19:00): Based on the Norwegian contact tracing app "Smittestopp" example, researchers explain how different external personal datasets can be matched, potentially leading to re-identification of individuals and disclosure of their private contacts.

List of data experts to follow

  • Bart Willemsen: Bart is a VP Analyst at Gartner with expertise in all privacy issues and issues related to digital society, ethics, and technology.

    Follow Bart for insights on the state or privacy worldwide, enterprise privacy and data protection.

  • Bernard Woo: As a VP Analyst at Gartner, Bernard focuses on data protection and privacy programs. He also covers 5G security considerations and data classification.

    Follow Bernard for insights on privacy by design, privacy risk management, compliance.

  • Brian Lowans: As a Senior Director Analyst at Gartner Research, Brian covers data governance issues, risk assessment, and encryption.

    Follow Brian for insights on data security governance, data risk assessment.

  • Carla Arend: Carla heads up IDC’s European cloud research. Arend provides industry clients with key insight into market dynamics, vendor activities, and end-user adoption trends in the European cloud market.

    Follow Carla for insights on enterprise cloud adoption in Europe, cloud management and security, GDPR impact on cloud.

  • Florimond Houssiau: Research Associate at the Alan Turing Institute, Florimond focuses on adversarial privacy, ranging from query obfuscation to protect privacy in web search queries to large-scale network-based attacks.

    Follow Florimond for insights on computational privacy, synthetic data.

  • Franziska Boenisch: Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Franziska’s research focuses on the intersection of trustworthy machine learning (ML) and privacy from the perspective of individual users and data owners.

    Follow Franziska for insights on privacy preservation in machine learning, impact of machine learning privacy on fairness and biases.

  • Gary LaFever: Co-founder, Co-CEO and General Counsel of Anonos, Gary LaFever is an expert on the intersection of law and technology, passionate about helping enterprises realize greater ROI from their data initiatives without compromising privacy and security.

    Follow Gary for insights on legal aspects of data privacy and security, privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) and privacy-enhancing computation (PEC).

  • Joerg Fritsch: Dr. Joerg Fritsch is an analyst on the Security and Risk Management team of Gartner.

    Follow Joerg for insights on data security and cloud security.

  • Katharina Koerner: Currently working at IAPP as Principal Researcher, Technology, Katharina specializes in privacy engineering, privacy by design, privacy enhancing technologies (PETs), and privacy frameworks.

    Follow Katharina for insights on new technologies and information security.

  • Magali Feys: Founder of AContrario.Law, a boutique law firm based in Belgium, Magali specializes in IP, IT, data protection and cybersecurity. Magali acts as a legal advisor to the Belgian Ministry of Health where she advises on privacy matters and is a member of the legal working party e-Health of the Belgian Minister for Public Healthcare.

    Follow Magali for insights on ethical data use, intellectual property, legal aspects of data privacy and cybersecurity.

  • Matteo Giomi: A researcher in data privacy and an expert in privacy evaluations, Matteo leads Anonos' research on synthetic data privacy. His most recent work focuses on quantifying privacy risks in synthetic data.

    Follow Matteo for insights in synthetic data privacy, differential privacy.

  • Paige Bartley: A Senior Analyst at 451 Research, Paige covers core data management topics. In her current research, Paige is analyzing the need for information governance to maximize the value of enterprise data amid proliferating global regulatory requirements and rising consumer expectations for data stewardship.

    Follow Paige for insights on data privacy, data governance, data integration.

  • Ralf Helkenberg: A research manager with the European security research team, Ralf is responsible for leading IDC’s European Privacy and Data Security research practice.

    Follow Ralf for insights on the impacts of data protection regulations on the technology sector.