What is a Privacy Working Group (PWG)?

Can you implement a privacy information management system without having a privacy working group? In the next 3 minutes you'll understand how to implement the privacy working group and the different roles which are included in this.

When it comes to developing a privacy program, three aspects must be considered. The first is consumer expectations. In order to fulfill the needs and deliver value, you must first understand what your audience expects from you. Understanding consumer expectations will help you stand out from the pack. The following step is to keep an eye on the company's responsibilities. Whether it is user data protection, data minimization, or data classification, you must understand the limits that your organization faces. The third and most significant aspect of the privacy program is the establishment of a privacy working group within the business, which should be a cross-functional group with executive leadership.

What exactly is the Privacy Working Group? A privacy working group is a group of people in an organization who are in charge of establishing a privacy information management system. This group's activity is not limited to implementation; continuing operation and response to various data privacy threats is also a key obligation of a privacy working group. PWG's key tasks include adhering to data privacy guidelines and resourcing the necessary requirements. In addition, this group is responsible for all incidents involving data privacy. In a nutshell, this group is the organization's one-stop shop for privacy.

It is critical for a good privacy management system to guarantee that each business unit invests in the data privacy program. In addition, the company should work on data minimization, which is the collection of the least amount of data required to complete a transaction. For example, suppose your company is developing a food delivery app. In this scenario, asking your customer about his or her work title and annual income is entirely unnecessary. So you should simply include the customer's name, payment information, and the address where the food will be delivered. Again, depending on the case, this can be enlarged or reduced, but the goal here is to capture as little data as possible.

The next stage is to allocate resources and prioritize tasks. Funding the privacy operations team and having trained individuals on the privacy team will undoubtedly aid in the development of a comprehensive privacy information management system.

What you prioritize is what you value.

Gathering qualified professionals and discussing why privacy is crucial for the organization is critical. At the end of the day, the organization cannot have a privacy information management system unless the management supports it.

During the second-half of this article, these five teams play an important role when it comes to implementing robust privacy management program in the organization.

Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) - This person is an essential member of a privacy working group. If an organization's privacy program is its monument, security is its foundation. The Chief Information Security Officer is in charge of the organization's access control and information security governance. This involves monitoring data in transit, data collecting, data at rest, application security, and evaluating data sharing technologies.

The legal team - If the privacy program is the monument, security is the foundation, then the legal team is the scaffolding to support the work crew and provide materials to aid in the construction and maintenance of that monument. You must recognize that privacy might vary from one scenario to the next. An organization should have a legal staff that assists the corporation in staying in compliance with various regulations and laws around the world. Because an organization can have a global presence, it is critical to comply with the local privacy laws and regulations. The legal team's mission is to educate employees and leaders about security through awareness and training, and to connect the engineering and product roadmap with legal and risk considerations.

The Engineering Team - You must admit that engineers may both make and break privacy. Engineering techniques can access, edit, or process data in many ways, which might have an influence on the organization's privacy. Whatever the organization is working on, engineering is critical, and engineering leadership should be sensitive to privacy concerns. The engineering team's role is to understand how data works in the organization and where it lives. The engineering team is responsible for repairing costly privacy issues and developing privacy-centric solutions that focus on building a solid privacy information management system in the enterprise.

The Data Science Team - After all, we're discussing DATA privacy. The data science team is the primary team in charge of data collection. The data science team analyzes and processes data in order to provide results and reports. When it comes to gathering data for various purposes, these individuals know where and how to gather the information, which is why it is critical to strike a balance between product management, engineering, and data science. If you want to know how data is collected, the data science team is the place to go.

The Business Development Team - If privacy program is the monument, security is the foundation, legal team is the scaffolding, then the business development funds the monument. This team is in charge of carrying out business schools and ensuring that funds are allocated effectively. This team is also in charge of aligning the risk with the business objectives and ensuring that the privacy business case is reviewed within the enterprise. For example, the business development team can create a business case in why investing in privacy and security training is far more significant than investing in a huge incident response procedure.

This was all done for the privacy working group. Again, these team and its many duties and responsibilities range from one business to the next. Rules can be added depending on the context, amount of data collected, and amount of data processed. Alternatively, the privacy working group might be reduced. One of the most crucial things to grasp is the function of Privacy Program Leader. Your organization's privacy program will not perform as intended unless and until you have someone accountable and responsible for data privacy. This person should head the privacy working group and be in charge of bringing all stakeholders on board with the data privacy mission. The privacy program leader should make the privacy case to the executives since there will be no privacy program in the organization unless and until upper management buys in.

In a nutshell, this person serves as a liaison between the data privacy team and the C-Suite. I hope you found this information interesting! I'd love to hear your opinions on this article, and if there's anything else I might be missing, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me.