Digital privacy: A conceptual framework for business

Abstract

On 2nd December, 2015, two individuals committed a deadly act of terrorism in San Bernardino, California. These individuals used the digital privacy features of their cell phones, which resulted in a complex exchange between the FBI and Apple computer about how to balance the digital privacy of the individual and still achieve reasonable societal protection. This particular exchange between government and private business is no longer a leading story in the news, but the question of digital privacy management is still an evolving and important business consideration. A significant number of business, legislative, regulatory, economic and social conditions require that business leaders understand the principles and theoretical frameworks that underpin privacy in the digital age. Financial service organisations, like many businesses, are responsible for significant volumes of private customer data, including names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, social security numbers, credit card data and government identification information. Understanding the key attributes of digital privacy is foundational to creating an actionable privacy policy for business to guide the collection and management of non-public and personally identifiable information. The purpose of this paper is to offer a framework for business and explore the relationship between governance controls, information security and digital privacy and, from this foundation, examine peer-reviewed literature concerning the attributes of digital privacy.