The average person doesn’t go through life wondering which data privacy regulations are protecting their personal data. Data privacy as a concept is well-known and desirable, but the specific laws, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and COPPA, rarely receive the same attention.
Yet, by 2024 data privacy regulations will dictate how most citizens’ data is used. Gartner estimates that “75% of the world’s population will have its personal data covered under modern privacy regulations, up from 25% today.” This exponential increase indicates that data privacy laws will continue to be passed or expand at a faster clip than they have to this point. In fact, in the same timeframe, Gartner reports that 80% of organizations will be subject to at least one privacy-focused data regulation.
This begs the question – are your data frameworks prepared to adapt?
Gartner’s Hype Cycle tracks technologies throughout their life cycles – from breakthrough innovations to widely adopted tools – to help organizations prioritize investments based on data goals and needs. The 2021 Hype Cycle for Privacy report indicates that many data privacy technologies have not yet reached maturity – but will become staples over the next few years.
By the end of 2024, Gartner’s report estimates that spending on data protection and compliance technology will surpass $15 billion worldwide, and more than 60% of organizations will rely on privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to ensure compliance with data privacy regulations.
Some PETs, like dynamic data masking, sensitive data discovery and classification, and privacy by design, are relatively mature and available on cloud data access control platforms like Immuta. Others, like differential privacy, are on the cusp of becoming mainstream – and essential.
Differential privacy is an approach to data privacy that injects noise into data analysis proportionally to the data being queried. By protecting the data without significantly changing it, differential privacy enables maximum data utility and privacy, so data is neither overly restricted nor overly exposed. The privacy-utility tradeoff can be a hurdle for many data teams, so differential privacy is a highly valuable technique for getting as much as possible out of sensitive data.
Therefore, Gartner considers differential privacy a breakthrough innovation that, though not yet fully mature, is a highly beneficial emerging technology. “Businesses need to ensure that their reputation reflects a company that protects customer data,” the report says. “Differential privacy ensures the privacy of individual rows of data while supporting meaningful analysis of aggregate data.”
Increasing regulatory requirements, demand for data as a business asset, malicious actors, and pressure to avoid headline-grabbing noncompliance penalties all contribute to the need for data engineering and operations teams to adopt differential privacy as a key capability in their data stack.
Immuta has been equipping data teams with differential privacy capabilities, as well as a suite of advanced, automated privacy-enhancing technologies, for several years – meaning our approach is vetted and trusted by customers across industries. In fact, Gartner recognized Immuta in the Hype Cycle for Privacy report as a leading differential privacy vendor.
By enabling universal cloud compatibility and consistent policy enforcement and auditing, Immuta helps ensure data engineering and operations teams are able to prepare data for analysis and consumption without risking costly leaks and breaches. As we enter the future of data privacy regulation, this will pay dividends in time and overhead savings.
If you’re ready to experience Immuta’s differential privacy capabilities for yourself, start a free trial.
