Why Boards of Directors Need to Engage on Privacy Issues

Why Boards of Directors Need to Engage on Privacy Issues

Thomson Reuters
Published by: Research Desk Released: Jun 13, 2019

The GDPR, the European Union’s sweeping data privacy regulation, becomes enforceable later this month and will have profound and far reaching implications for the global economy. As a result, the C-suites and boards of directors of the corporate world have started to better understand privacy’s importance and impact to their businesses. Board-level attention to the looming GDPR has rapidly evolved into board-level concern with privacy in general.

Recent research has shown that a significant majority of organizations now treat privacy as a “board-level issue.”  However, a study of 1,000 privacy professionals by Thomson Reuters found that 75 percent of board members generally engaged on privacy issues still “struggle to understand the implications of data privacy and protection obligations.”  Data privacy and cybersecurity are among the most urgent challenges facing business leader