IAPP Privacy Academy 2013 Preview

​Taking place from Monday, September 30 to Wednesday, October 2 in Seattle, WA and organized by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), IAPP Privacy Academy 2013 aims to provide attendees with the tools and guidance needed to address privacy challenges. The event features educational programming for professionals in an array of industries, privacy certification preparation classes and examinations, and networking with the top minds in privacy and data protection.

As a proud Silver Sponsor, AvePoint will have a presence throughout the entire event at Booth 7. Attendees can stop by to meet with our compliance experts and learn about our latest innovations that help organizations collaborate with confidence by protecting data from the people who should not have it and making it available to the people who should, including:

· AvePoint Compliance Guardian

· AvePoint Compliance Solutions

· Compliance Detector

Additionally, AvePoint Vice President of Risk Management and Compliance Dana Simberkoff will present a special breakout session with Bank of America Senior Vice President and Chief Privacy Officer Christine Frye at 4pm on Tuesday, October 1. Entitled “Find Your Silver Lining: Navigating Your Way in a Financial Service Data Breach”, the session will explain how a structured approach to data breach prevention and response, including engagement with stakeholders and regulators, privacy impact assessments, and a best practices enterprise compliance management strategy helps navigate the challenge – particularly as more organizations are utilizing cloud computing in their enterprise collaboration initiatives.

In advance of this year’s event, we sat down with IAPP President and CEO J. Trevor Hughes, CIPP, and asked him some questions about what’s unique about this year’s event, aspects he’s looking forward to most, and more.

1. What are you looking forward to most at IAPP Privacy Academy this year?

J. Trevor Hughes: With IAPP events, the thing that I look forward to most is seeing our members, and the networking that occurs at an IAPP conference is simply unparalleled anywhere in the world. There will be more than 1,000 privacy professionals from all of the leading organizations around the world.

The second thing that I’m always most excited about is the content. We have dozens upon dozens of sessions that will dive deep into every operational challenge that people are facing inside their organizations today. But this year, with everything that’s happened with the National Security Agency (NSA) and Edward Snowden, I am particularly excited about the keynotes that we have. We’ve been able to secure the former General Counsel of the NSA, Stewart Baker. Stewart was General Counsel when many of the programs and technologies that are currently being discussed in the media were being approved and implemented inside the NSA. He’s going to do a keynote about that world – about approving those technologies, about dealing with privacy inside the NSA.

The second speaker that we have that I’m really looking forward to is Howard Schmidt. Howard Schmidt was the head of cyber security for both the Obama and the Bush Whitehouses. So he’s going to talk about the other aspect of this, and that is, what are the threats out there that the NSA and others are trying to respond to? It’s sort of two sides of the coin, and I think that’s going to be a really compelling way for us to round out that issue that’s taking up so much of the media’s attention today.

On top of all of this, we have Gene Kranz. Gene Kranz was the head of mission control for the Apollo 13 mission. One may ask, “What does a space shot have to do with privacy?” Well, Gene Kranz headed mission control for a space mission that went terribly wrong. As many of us have seen from the movie, he safely guided that spacecraft back to Earth and delivered those astronauts back to their families. That is a classic example of managing through a crisis, and Gene is going to talk about that. That’s incredibly valuable to privacy professionals, because every privacy professional eventually will face a data breach, media flare up, and an issue that will challenges their organization on the issue of privacy. Understanding crisis management like that from someone with that type of experience is pretty phenomenal.

2. How do you anticipate this year’s event will be different from previous years?

JTH: This Academy will be different in a number of ways. Some are external factors and some are internal factors. The external factors are the explosion of issues around the NSA and Edward Snowden affair. Whereas privacy was incredibly hot six months ago, privacy is absolutely searing white hot today. We have amazing coverage of the NSA issue, including our keynotes at the summit.

But there are also internal factors as well. We’re bringing the Academy to Seattle for the first time, hosting the event in Bellevue, WA. That is a hotbed for technology, so we have an amazing aggregation of technologists and technology-focused sessions. That will make it quite unique. I think that we’re also upping our game when it comes to the content we’re presenting. We’re really focusing on operationalizing this content, so providing our attendees with takeaways that they can actually take back and do things with when they get back to their offices.

3. What kind of takeaways, ideas, and lessons do you hope attendees of IAPP Privacy Academy will come away with after the event?

JTH: In regard to our conferences, I always say, “Come for the content, stay for the networking.” I think the initial decision to attend has to really be based on the conference providing the type of content that you need to get your job done. We have worked really carefully to ensure that, of the dozens and dozens of sessions that we have, that anyone working in the field of privacy as well as anyone concerned about privacy can come to the Academy and build an entire conference that is incredibly robust. In fact, I think most people will find that they will come and not be able to attend all of the sessions that are relevant to them, and they may actually be frustrated about that. That’s an issue for which I don’t apologize. Having too much content at our conference is a good problem to have.

I also think that people will take away how incredibly connected they are to a profession. Privacy is still a nascent field. Inside organizations, managing privacy can be somewhat of a lonely job. You are generally a single person or a small team of people in a large enterprise dealing with an issue that not everybody understands across the entire enterprise. So you are always having this uphill battle of explaining what you do and trying to convey why what you do is important to your colleagues inside your organization. That’s not the case at the Academy. You are in a room with people who completely get what you do and share your pain. That sense of camaraderie and collegiality resonates throughout the entire event.

4. What can attendees expect from the pre-conference session that you’re leading before the event?

JTH: One of the things that we try and do at the Academy is provide a broad array of offerings for anyone at any point in their privacy career. So this is for people who are brand new to the privacy field – one of the things that we encourage them to do is our Privacy Bootcamp. We’ve been doing it since the very beginning of the IAPP. It’s a four-hour session that myself and Kirk Nahra, a leading lawyer from Washington D.C., put together to really offer exactly that – a bootcamp, an early introduction to the issue of privacy, a broad survey of the issues, the laws, the ways to manage privacy, the concerns that emerge. It really is a valuable entrance into the profession. So lots of folks will be coming to see that session. It’s one of our most popular pre-conference workshops that we offer.

But just as much as we focus on that very nascent level of professional, we also focus on the highest level of professionals as well. We will go beyond mere discussions about compliance into some of the most thorny public policy issues that we face today, how to deal with the latest and emerging technologies and what type of standards should apply to them, how to manage privacy in incredibly complex organizations…those types of things that are really relevant to that top level of the profession are absolutely offered as well.

5. Outside of the event, what do you recommend attendees see or do while they’re in Seattle?

JTH: Seattle is a phenomenal destination for anyone who’s never visited. I can absolutely recommend the Bellevue area, which is quite beautiful in and of itself, and Seattle is 10 miles to the west. In Seattle, Pike’s Place Market, Seattle Art Museum, and many of the things that are offered there are phenomenal. I think, above all, one of my favorite things in Seattle is the food. Pacific Northwest seafood is phenomenal and there are tons and tons of great restaurants in the area. So it really is a playground for people once they’ve done all the hard work of the conference.

Interest in joining us at this year’s IAPP Privacy Academy? Visit the event website to register today!