New privacy initiative, headed by ADT, to establish home security standards, best practices

Yesterday in the United States, Data Privacy Day 2019 was celebrated. On social media, tweets flew by offering tips on how to protect data against hackers. Security professionals and enthusiasts on LinkedIn discussed the topic at hand while top privacy leaders, such as the National Cyber Security Alliance Executive Director, Kelvin Coleman; Eva Velasquez, president and CEO, Identity Theft Resource Center; and CEO Larry Magid of Connect Safely, among others, convened in San Francisco for an afternoon of focused discussion about opportunities and challenges for data security moving forward.

Yes, yesterday was quite the day for data security. However, we must recognize that securing data is a 24/7, 365 day a week operation. Google “data security breach” and incident after incident will pop up for me, it was about 117 million in .75 seconds. Recently, Ring was outed by major news outlets for Ukraine engineers and executives at Ring having “highly privileged access” to live customer camera feeds — both doorbell cameras and in-home cameras — around the world, while a NEST camera was hijacked with a voice warning a California family that three missiles from North Korea were headed to the U.S., which, of course, was not true, but I can imagine sent the family into sheer panic.

With breaches such as these, among the millions of other data breaches and exposed records in the United States alone, ADT in partnership with SIA, The Monitoring Association, Electronic Security Association, the Internet Society's Online Trust Alliance and TrustArc are creating a new consumer privacy initiative.

“Alongside industry organizations and partners, we will be outlining privacy and ethics priorities for the industry, creating an external and internal advisory board, and updating our promise to customers: 'At ADT we are dedicated to your safety, and helping take care of what you value and cherish most in your life: your loved ones, your property and your privacy,” ADT's CEO, Jim DeVries, said in an internal company memo that went out to all 19,000 ADT employees and to SSN, exclusively.

In the coming months, the initiative is focused on the following key objectives, the press release said.

• Adopting a set of industry-wide best practices that are customer-centric and drive transparency.

• Working with dealers, partners and other industry organizations on enhanced privacy and ethical standards for our industry.

• Programs focused on privacy, ethics and transparency.

ADT is also soliciting participation from other organizations who are interested in helping to drive the objectives.

So, how do you think this initiative will help with data security?

Let's discuss!