How can product managers show leadership on privacy issues?

By Mark Helfen


It's scary out there, and Phil Burton has the stories to prove it. Customer profiles and data put at risk by poor design, poor testing, and just not caring.


 
Burton is Principal Consultant and Trainer at the 280 Group, who bill themselves as "Product Marketing and Product Management Experts." Burton has been with them for four years, and has a 25-year career in product management and product marketing focused on information security, data communications and networking.

The problems come from three source - policies that the company decides on, or maybe ignores making a decision. Operations that don't work well, and customers that aren't educated. In the end, product manager will need to provide leadership in all three areas.

At Monday's (7/12/2010) SDForum combined Marketing and Security SIG meeting, Burton discussed a long list of companies where poor decisions and operations about privacy put their brand image at risk.

Facebook is in a class all of its own, maybe because of its size. If you were alive and breathing over the last 90 days, you couldn't have missed the huge controversy over their new (and newer again) privacy settings. According to Burton, the privacy policy reflects Facebook's long-standing strategy to "monetize their customers private information.

In Burton's estimate, Facebook is "cavalier" about sharing users private data. "Its astonishing how much information they consider public."

In a famous speech, Facebook's founder said, "the age of privacy is over."

Blippy is another example. The company lets their users share limited information about their credit purchases with their friends, who can see what their friend's latest purchases are. But in an example of an operational failure, the system exposed information it wasn't supposed to - the credit card numbers of their users.

How can product managers show leadership on privacy issues?

By Mark Helfen

Privacy is becoming more critical, both to consumers and to businesses. While the underlying security technology may be complex, you don't need to be an expert to exercise leadership and help assure that your products meet market expectations.

At next Monday's (July 12) combined SDForum Marketing and Security SIG meetings, Phillip Burton will speak on the topic "What Every Product Manager Needs to Know About Security."

Burton is Principal Consultant and Trainer at the 280 Group, who bill themselves as "Product Marketing and Product Management Experts." Burton has been with them for four years, and has a 25-year career in product management and product marketing focused on information security, data communications and networking.

When I spoke to Burton this week, he said, "There are an alarming set of privacy issues" showing up with social media and Web 2.0, but some companies don't seem to care.

While raising alarms, he insists that "I'm not being alarmist."

"A single incident can damage your brand," said Burton. While he thinks that large companies are more likely to have their act together, recent incidents involving Facebook and Google Buzz show even they can get bitten by privacy problems, gaining bad P.R. in the process. For small businesses, a privacy breach can cause permanent damage.