Events / Professional

Pre-conference Workshops – an overview (IAPP Global Privacy Summit 2015)

By K Royal @HeartofPrivacy | Published March 8, 2015 | No Comments

if you are interested in privacy, pay attention to IAPP and attend the conferences. Don’t write off the pre-conferences. They are powerful, informative, valuable sessions well worth your time and money. Read further to learn more.

In the first post to this series, I discussed the location, venue, attendees, and opening session of the IAPP Global Privacy Summit 2015. In this post, I will briefly discuss the pre-conference workshops.

The IAPP designates the day before its summit as the “pre-conference” day. I was honored and delighted to participate in the pre-conference this year, so I cannot speak directly to the content and quality of this year’s workshops – but I have attended some previous pre-conference workshops of the same topics. And some I have not.

In addition to workshops, the pre-conference day includes training sessions for the IAPP certifications, several KnowledgeNet meet-ups, and various networking events – such as peer-to-peer roundtables, young professionals, and 5-minute mixers.

In general, the workshops all seem highly relevant to privacy professionals and seem to contain valuable information. The IAPP does charge extra to attend the pre-conferences, but every year, there are quite a number of people who attend.

Half-day morning workshops: There were three workshops presented on Wednesday from 9 am to 1 pm:
– the Data Breach Notification Bootcamp,
– the EU Privacy Bootcamp, and
– Piecing Together the Privacy Engineering Puzzle.

• Given the number of breaches in the recent past, the first workshop was probably a popular one. Ponemon Institute named 2014 as the Year of the Mega Breaches.
• The EU Privacy Bootcamp is also popular with anyone whose company does business in the European Union. The EU is the strongest multinational privacy regime in the world and is thus a topic that a global company – or simply one who is active in the EU – should know quite well.
• The last session on the privacy engineering is not one with which I am familiar, but OH MY GOODNESS, I should have been there. (my excuse was inshlepping back and forth from the Mayflower, but seriously, I should have just got my sillybutt up and attended). Here are some excerpts of the description:
  • Include privacy considerations in the systems engineering and development process.
  • …a survey of the evolution of “privacy engineering” and how it can be used to achieve Privacy by Design objectives…
  • …explore the current efforts underway to define the privacy engineering discipline, including the status of the federal privacy engineering model the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is developing…

wow.

Half-day afternoon workshops: there were three sessions presented on Wednesday afternoon from 2 pm – 6 pm:
– Globalizing Your Privacy Program: The Hot Buttons,
– Healthcare Privacy—Diagnosis vs. Prognosis of Hot-button     Topics in Healthcare, and
– Privacy Bootcamp.

• Globalizing a privacy program sounds like an incredibly practical and useful workshop. I recognize some of the names presenting and know them to be very knowledgeable and practical.
• Healthcare privacy was the one in which I spoke. Trust me, it was riveting! Seriously, good speakers and great material. We did not get to discuss some of the topics in depth because our fabulous audience was highly engaged.
• Privacy bootcamp is a successful annual workshop presented by Trevor Hughes, president and CEO of IAPP and Kirk Nahra, partner with Riley Wein and frankly, one my favorite privacy attorneys ever. ’nuff said.

And last, there is one full day workshop, Privacy in the Cloud with a Silver Lining. Cloud services are always a controversial topic for privacy professionals, so it was likely a packed house.

I apologize that I cannot give you summaries of the sessions nor true feedback on their value. The purpose was to give you an overview on the offerings and some insight into whether attending the IAPP’s pre-conference workshops is valuable.

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