Privacy software: Who are the early leaders?

Anybody responsible for data privacy soon discovers a hard truth -- privacy compliance is a highly manual undertaking. Whether it's tracking where all of the company's data is or keeping up with changes in obscure privacy laws, the privacy professional is often sentenced to a life behind spreadsheets. If privacy didn't deal with cutting-edge social issues, it might contend for the most tedious job in the corporate center.

But the tedium may be lifting.

The privacy profession, which just 10 years ago fit into a single conference room in Washington, has grown large enough to form a reliable market for software products. When in 2006 I first estimated the North America-dominated privacy-advice market at $400 million, membership in the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) stood at 2,000. The IAPP now has over 6,000 members, according to its recent paper on the future of the privacy profession. Other benchmarks such as the number of privacy consultants and lawyers suggest the world privacy-advice market is now around $1 billion.

The rest of the story at <http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180607/Privacy_software_Who_are_the_early_leaders_?source=CTWNLE_nlt_security_2010-08-12>.