Four shades of privacy – safe and win-win privacy are for business winners

Idlegcy defined four shades of privacy. Most people talk about documented privacy, when they talk about the GDPR initiatives of their organization. That is only the basic shade. There are three more shades. Only the third and the fourth shade of privacy are supporting business people to also win on GDPR.

Let’s have a look …

1 – Documented privacy

The privacy statement, cookie policy and data register are done, and … are collecting dust. There might be an artificial feeling of compliance, whereas the company has only paid to produce documents no one knows where they are, and what they are for.

2 – Lean privacy

You add a level of pre-thinking and remove all the unnecessary personal data storage before starting the GDPR exercise. This is better, because at least, some clean-up of historic rubbish has been done. And often this has caused some challenges to the IT systems, that have helped understand data security is not that evident.

3 – Safe privacy

This is what GDPR actually is about. Some people would call this GDPR compliance, but we prefer to stress the safeness of this shade of privacy. Safety is when everybody working at or for the company is conscious about personal data, and does all he or she can do to protect the safety of personal data. This does not happen overnight, it requires some staff investment and – most importantly – requires a continuous effort to keep reminding everyone about personal data safety. The win is that the company stands out, and becomes an attractive employer or supplier.

4 – Win-win privacy

Which is even better. In this shade, individual stakeholders get a reward for sharing data. This reward does not have to be financial – although it can be a financial bonus. It can also be a voucher, a coffee, a free training, a subscription reduction, an online present, … In this case your stakeholders get a reward for allowing the company to use the data. This, of course, only works well, when the company is also a safe haven for data.

So what about you? What level of privacy does your company aims for? Want some advice to win with shade 3 and shade 4? Get in touch, and we’ll talk about it over a coffee.