Privacy Protection Update: NIST Publishes Voluntary Online Privacy Framework

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) thismonth released a voluntary online privacy framework to enable better privacy engineering practices that support privacy by design concepts and help organizations protect individuals' privacy.

A collaborative effort between NIST and organizational and individual stakeholders in the public and private sectors, the document, entitled "NIST Privacy Framework: A Tool for Improving Privacy through Enterprise Risk Management," can support organizations in the following specific ways:

• building customers' trust by supporting ethical decision-making in product and service design or deployment that optimizes beneficial uses of data while minimizing adverse consequences for individuals' privacy and society as a whole;

• fulfilling current compliance obligations, as well as future-proofing products and services to meet these obligations in a changing technological and policy environment; and

• facilitating communication about privacy practices with individuals, business partners, assessors, and regulators.

According to NIST, the Privacy Frameworkthrough a risk- and outcome-based approachis flexible enough to address diverse privacy needs, enable more innovative and effective solutions that can lead to better outcomes for individuals and organizations, and stay current with technology trends, such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The document asserts that the use of existing and emerging standards will enable economies of scale and drive the development of systems, products, and services that meet identified market needs while being mindful of the privacy needs of individuals.

Read the full NIST report.

See the related news items:

NIST to Hold Public Workshop on Voluntary Privacy Framework to Help Organizations Manage Risk (2018)