Privacy Engineering: Investing in the Next Frontier of Privacy & Data Security

Visibility into the security ecosystem has been fortunate in the last decade: 1) significant data breaches have never been more topical—from the notorious Target hack in 2013 to the MGM Resorts breach reported just last week; 2) coupled with an unprecedented macroeconomic environment, interest in security innovation has grown exponentially.

There is one side effect to this visibility: hype. New cutting-edge solutions featuring buzzwords filled the conference expo floors for years, and like all hype cycles, eventually, that excitement turned into cynicism.

The cybersecurity industry has now come full circle. Why are we trying to solve new problems when the basics still need to be addressed? And working on the basics has proven to be successful in categories like endpoint (i.e., EDR), identity (i.e., SSO & MFA), and asset management.

Data security is now having its moment. In the age of big data – where 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are produced every day and growing – during a global privacy revolution, a new category in cybersecurity is emerging:

Privacy Engineering

Privacy Engineering sits at the intersection of law, and the maturation of new digital business processes: agile development, multi-cloud compute SaaS-delivered applications, and continued adoption of remote/3rd party workforces – all sources of disparate and high-velocity data flow with unknown visibility and liability.

Data Security Meets Privacy

Datastores are no longer limited to on-premise legacy ERP systems. Now data lives everywhere from on-premise to cloud with companies utilizing data storage services from the likes of Amazon, Salesforce, MongoDB, or Hadoop.

On top of this, new privacy regulations such as the GDPR and CCPA are pushing companies to be more accountable for the consumer data they store with hefty fines associated with those who are non-compliant. Meaning it’s never been more critical for companies to understand their data stores – including what is collected, how it’s used, and where it resides.

Privacy engineering focuses on securing data in this new world of process, technology, and security. How do we enable data to be leveraged as an asset at scale while addressing the needs of companies struggling to manage the massive influx of data, remain compliant with new regulations, and above all? Keep data safe.

Coming Soon – A Privacy Engineering-centric Solution for Data Stores

While we’re in the nascent stages of the Privacy Engineering category, we are starting to see more seed companies emerge to fill the gaps. At ForgePoint, we’re excited to have invested in one of those seed companies on a stealth basis with product and scale validation by the Fortune 500. Stay tuned!