SSN data privacy webcast - data protection starts with people

YARMOUTH, Maine – Data privacy has become a hot button issue in 2024, even more than previous years due to several very public and damaging data breaches affecting multiple industries.  

Security System News’ most recent webcast looked to shed some light on the future of data security with the advent of technologies and exploits.  

Titled “Data Privacy: How to keep up with AI, ChatGPT, biometrics & more,” the webcast featured a panel of industry professionals - Mark Bennett, CEO, Sentry Enterprises; Ivan Avramov, manager, security systems, Watermark Estate Management Services; and Senthilkumar Chandrasekaran, senior manager, security products, Salesforce. The webcast was moderated by Security Systems News (SSN) Editor Cory Harris. 

Impact of AI 

SSN began by asking panelists whether the increased adoption of AI has impacted the data protection of businesses and consumers. 

“So, we can look at this from different perspectives, right? Obviously one big concern from a privacy standpoint is that research has over and over shown that the majority of consumers believe AI posts are bigger because that's for their privacy, and also a lot of the governments started enacting laws and everything to make sure that it's being protected,” Chandrasekaran said. “For example, you might have heard about the European Union doing a law around the AI act, and the U.S. government has started writing executive orders to protect privacy for a lot of consumers. Overall, it has transformed business operations with benefits such as increased revenue and cost reduction but has also introduced new data privacy issues.” 

“What has been made clear around AI is that AI systems will require a vast amount of data just for the purpose of training and optimization of those algorithms,” added Avramov. “This raises a lot of concerns around data privacy and how that information is being collected. I am sure that companies that develop these algorithms are looking at ways to mitigate any sort of personal data that makes it into those algorithms for the purpose of obtaining. But we, the end users, don't necessarily have any insight as to how these algorithms get obtained, and that leads to the really concerning factor around profiling and targeting, because that profiling and targeting could also lead to targeting around advertisements, targeting around specific products, and it could also lead to, probably, accusing a person of a crime. We have to kind of look at these topics.” 

Protecting Businesses 

SSN questioned panelists on best practices, asking them what businesses can do to enhance their cybersecurity posture and ensure that the sensitive data they collect from the public is less vulnerable to breaches and other cyberattacks. 

“If you look over the last decade or two, right, it's been very clear that our current approach to cybersecurity is failing on a global scale,” Bennett replied. “We keep building bigger and better fences around our systems, and we keep doing a much better job of educating our workforces about cybersecurity hygiene and best practices, and these are all positive and necessary things to do. But the breaches continue to grow in number and severity, and the tools available to the bad actors are getting far more sophisticated than they were in the past. And of course, we have access to those tools as well to help prevent and detect breaches as well, but it's a very slow process.” 

“(To) Mark's point, we need to really implement that in a more robust way,” Avramov followed up. “I'm also a strong believer, as a team, being able to deter any kind of cybercrime is going back to what I mentioned earlier, our employees. We need to really train them to be able to recognize these types of attacks, because usually most often the vector in the medium of any attack is an employee, and being able to recognize these signs of an upcoming cybersecurity risk or threat is very important.” 

This article was edited for length and clarity. To watch the whole webcast with our panel of experts you can visit www.securitysystemsnews.com/webcasts.