NICOLE STEPHENSEN
TALKING PRIVACY By Nicole Stephensen, Privacy Maven and Partner, at IIS Partners I read a wonderful book a couple of years ago. It has
of the local hospital was an all too frequent privacy
impacted my work immensely, leading to frank and
breach. Email was not a common form of almost real
fearless discussions, moments of clarity around
time communication, and digitisation (of work, life,
responsible stewardship of data (the personal stuff,
banking, socialising) was still a twinkle in the eyes of
the stuff about you and me) and innovative and
technologists. Fast forward to today and the focus
elegant development of privacy-enhancing features
of digitisation has moved beyond communication
in policy and technology. Yet it has nothing to do with
technologies to managed service provision,
privacy. Nothing and everything, apparently.
governance, the Internet of Things, all things social, insights and trends. All these applications of digital
I’m talking about The Art of Gathering: How we meet
technology have one thing in common: data.
and why it matters by Priya Parker. Her premise is that getting together at a conference, in a boardroom,
Following the merger of my boutique consultancy,
at a café, over Zoom, over Teams or even with a
Ground Up Consulting with privacy consultancy IIS
quick phone call has meaning and can be a powerful
Partners in April 2022 my work continues to focus
experience if we go about such activities the
on the intersection of privacy and technology, where
right way.
information security considerations are a huge part of the privacy discussion, and where both disciplines
Just days after finishing the book I had the
need a seat at the table to solve today’s wicked
opportunity to meet Parker at a leadership retreat for
privacy problems. When we meet at that table we get
privacy professionals and experience firsthand her
the chance to hear each other and understand we
approach to gathering. Her message was simple but
share common purposes: to promote good decision
transformative: “We rely too much on routine and the
making and prevent harm.
conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved.”
Now, back to that book. I see three opportunities to acknowledge the distinctive nature of the privacy
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The nature of my work has changed over the years.
discipline and its significance, straddling as it does
There was a time when erroneously sending medical
information security, data governance and risk in
records by fax to the local convenience store instead
our organisations (and the people at the heart of
W O M E N I N S E C U R I T Y M A G A Z I N E
S E P T E M B E R • O C T O B E R 2022
