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The raging debate over privacy has only gotten bigger in the wake of GDPR. Trust is now a competitive factor. How do businesses earn it? How do they keep data open, free and protected?

The manifold issues stirred up by Data Privacy, related legislation, and the risks and pitfalls are in the headlines (and your Twitter feed) every single day. It’s a subplot to the great story of our time that is AI and it is understandably sidetracking the excitement of possibilities in the digital age.

To fix the issues surrounding Data Privacy and establish greater consumer confidence, organizations must build a culture that values, and makes possible, trust. To say that building trust is strategically existential for tech giants, and those that depend on the giants, is an understatement. Forget legislation (like GDPR) for a moment, and look at the bigger picture: An absence of trust leads to anti-trust.

As the internet morphs into the “splinternet”, a place where attitudes toward Data Privacy are fragmenting among different regions of the world, it’s clear the response of business to privacy challenges will help define what our world looks like, how it operates, and who wins and loses.

Data Management will be front and center. Based on our research, companies can avoid data pitfalls and help privacy flourish in the digital age if they follow a few key dos and don’ts:

1. Promote public policy that rewards privacy ethics. There’s a reason companies like Verizon aren’t aggressively combating GDPR-like legislation and moves toward similar laws in California. Getting on board with regulation, like the proverbial apple a day, may help keep antitrust away. The closer you are to the debate the more influence you can have on the future.
2. Embrace the need to monitor privacy and create a C-suite level position to lead the charge. New roles are emerging to support data practitioners. At the executive level, Chief Trust Officers can work closely with Data Protection Officers to oversee privacy and customer advocacy, thus ensuring digital innovations thrive. Expect to see individuals whose job is to probe information that still largely goes unexamined: data from Internet of Things-enabled devices, sensors, and biometric monitors. Additionally, with corporations now mandated to consider consumer data as sovereign, personal data brokers will ensure consumers receive revenue from the resale of the digital footprints they leave behind on their social-media feeds and streaming preferences. The possibilities for jobs like these are endless, but one thing is for sure: There’s a future of work for Data Management professionals (and lawyers!) in interpreting the ramifications of privacy legislation.
3. Implement metadata protection initiatives. It’s one thing to protect customer-contributed data, i.e. comments and photos, and to allow customers to edit or delete it. But metadata is an even bigger deal. When it comes to metadata, or GDPR’s “contextual data”, we’re already seeing moves toward new privacy controls from players like Facebook, which plans to implement a Clear History feature effectively providing a delete button that allows customers to “check out” when they want and “be forgotten.”
4. GDPR is not the enemy. Your mindset needs to embrace the fact that GDPR regulation is your new best friend. While “move fast and break things” sounded great a few years ago, the Wild West days of unfettered data use are over. Privacy blunders have now forewarned and forearmed policy makers. Legislative changes like GDPR could be the driving force of business success in the future. As the digital age matures for data managers, augmenting good governance with GDPR principles provides a much-needed codification of privacy laws that eliminate ethical gray areas.
5. Don’t neglect sound ethical principles. Instead, double down on ethical behavior. One consequence of betting the corporate brand on questionable uses of data is the disappearance of customers. Facebook bet its brand on Cambridge Analytica and suffered the consequences – a $120 billion loss — when it missed revenue expectation and slowed user growth. The number of North American users remained flat, while the number of daily active users in Europe dropped 3 million from the first quarter. Customers have a right to see the data that’s been collected about them. Without this internal covenant, companies move from the business of delivering valuable goods and services to the business of surveillance.
6. Don’t overreact. On the road to the future of privacy, course corrections and pivots will be a natural and necessary occurrence. Ethics, and the law, will help your organization move forward in a responsible manner. Submitting to fear, and shutting down digital innovation, is the worst thing your organization can do.