Gartner: By 2023, 65% of the world will have personal data covered under modern privacy regulations

By 2023, 65% of the world's population will have its personal data covered under modern privacy regulations, up from 10% in 2020, according to Gartner.

"With more countries introducing modern privacy laws in the same vein as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the world has reached a threshold where the European baseline for handling personal information is now the de facto global standard," says Nader Henein, research vice president at Gartner.

"Lawmakers are introducing new privacy laws that seek parity with the GDPR. These regulations allow whole countries to move one step closer to achieving adequacy with the EU, where their local businesses can benefit from a larger market with their new "trusted" status.

While some organisations focused on cost optimisation during the global COVID-19 pandemic, it is paramount that they incorporate the demands of a rapidly evolving privacy landscape into their business's data strategy.

"Security and risk management (SRM) leaders need to help their organisation adapt their personal data handling practices without exposing the business to loss through fines or reputational damages," says Henein.

Gartner says SRM leaders should adopt key capabilities that support increasing volume, variety and velocity of personal data by putting in place a three-stage technology-enabled privacy program: establish, maintain and evolve.

The three stages, according to Gartner:

The establish stage 
Gartner says the establish stage includes foundational capabilities of a privacy management program. 
"They are necessary for any customer-facing organisation that processes personal information," the analyst firm explains.
"These include discovery and enrichment which allow organisations to establish and maintain privacy risk registers."

The maintain stage
The maintain stage allows organisations to scale their privacy management programs, Gartner says.

"Capabilities focus on ongoing administration and resource management," it says.

"These include augmenting incident responses to address breaches of personal data as well as bringing automation to privacy impact assessments," adds Gartner.

The evolve stage
And finally, Gartner says the evolve stage includes specialist tools that focus on reducing privacy risk with little or no impact on the data utility.

"One of the more popular capabilities allows organisations to extract insight about their consumers from large pools of data without exposing them to excessive privacy risk," the analyst firm says.

"This has been a critical feature for marketing teams," it adds.

Gartner analysts presented these findings during the Gartner Security - Risk Management Summit 2020, taking place virtually in the Americas and EMEA this week.