Jekaterina Macuka Spills The Secrets On The Role Of Regulators And Why A Common Sense Approach to GDPR Is The Only Way Forward

Hi, my name is Jamal Ahmed and I'd like to invite you to listen to this special episode of the #1 ranked Data Privacy podcast.

In this special episode with the Director Of The Latvian Data State Inspectorate discover:

• The Privacy Paradigm Shift and the impact of GDPR on Latvia
• How to adopt a common sense approach to GDPR implementation
• Practical tips to avoid burnout and imposter syndrome

And so much more...

Ready to become a World Class Privacy Expert? Book your call to join the World's Leading Privacy Program

Jekaterina Macuka (Matzuka) is Director of the Data State Inspectorate of the Republic of Latvia.

She has previously held positions as Head of the unit of Policy Development and Religious affairs at the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Latvia and as the Resident Twinning Adviser at the EU Twinning Project-Capacity Building of the National Centre for Personal Data Protection of Moldova. She is an experienced Policy Director with a demonstrated history of working in the government administration industry. Skilled in Data Privacy, Government, European Law, International Negotiations, and Legal Writing. Strong business development professional with a Master's Degree focused in Legal Studies, General from Latvijas Universitate.

Follow Jamal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmjahmed/

Follow Jekaterina on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jekaterina-macuka-5a8654a7/

Subscribe to the Privacy Pros Academy YouTube Channel

► https://www.youtube.com/c/PrivacyPros

In data protection, the devil is in the details. I think that for the supervisory authorities as well, it's very important to have this balanced and common-sense approach.

Jekaterina, I have a question. Earlier, you were talking about the amount of responsibility that you have in your role as an organization, so as a supervisory authority representing people's protection of data, and then you are actually the leader of that organization. And not just that, you also have to represent Latvia on the European Data Protection Board. How do you sleep at night?

Very peacefully.

Are you ready to know what you don't know about Privacy Pros? Then you're in the right place.

Welcome to the Privacy Pros Academy podcast by Kazient Privacy Experts, the podcast to launch progress and excel your career as a privacy pro.

Hear about the latest news and developments in the world of privacy. Discover fascinating insights from leading global privacy professionals and hear real stories and top tips from the people who have been where you want to get to.

We're an official IAPP training partner.

We've trained people in over 137 countries and counting.

So whether you're thinking about starting a career in data privacy or you're an experienced professional, this is the podcast for you.

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Privacy Pros Academy podcast. My name is Jamilla, and I am your podcast host. With me today as my co-host is Jamal Ahmed, Fellow of Information Privacy and CEO at Kazient Privacy Experts. Jamal is an astute and influential privacy consultant, strategist, board advisor and Fellow of Information Privacy. He's a charismatic leader, progressive thinker and innovator in the privacy sector who directs complex global privacy programs. He's a sought after commentator, contributing to the BBC, ITV News, Euro News, Talk Radio, the Independent and The Guardian, amongst others. Hi, Jamal.

Hey, Jamilla.

How are you?

I'm recovering from some kind of a cold or a virus, but you know what men are like when we get a head cold so I’ve had better days. But I'm so excited because, well, I'm not going to give away who the guest is just yet. We're going to be speaking to someone who sits on the European Data Protection Board and I've also had the pleasure of being hosted by her for a lovely dinner and lots of nice conversations. So I'm looking forward to continuing that conversation.

Before we get to our guest today. You were recently involved in a tribunal. Tell us more about that and you won it.

Wow, well done.

But I mean, look, as privacy professionals, this is what we signed up for, right? We stand up for truth, we stand up for justice, and we're there to make sure that we're helping and serving. But when you see something wrong in front of you and you see people are taking advantage and you know you've got the capabilities to do something about it, I think it's our responsibility to do so.

I agree with you there. Right, so what's coming up today? We've got a great podcast, as Jamal briefly mentioned earlier, we're going to be talking about the conference that Jamal mentioned he spoke at in Latvia. We're going to be talking about the importance of personal data protection in the daily life and lots, lots more. So let me introduce our guests today. Our guest is Jekaterina Macuka and she is Director of the Data State Inspector of the Republic of Latvia, who has previously held positions as head of the Unit of Policy Development and Religious Affairs at the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Latvia and as the resident twinning advisor at the EU twinning project capacity building the National Center for Personal Data Protection of Moldova. She's an experienced policy director with a demonstrated history of working in the government administration industry. She's skilled in data privacy, government, European law, international negotiations, and legal writing. She is a strong business development professional with a master's degree focused in legal studies from Latvian University I want to say. Did I say that right?

Latvian University.

Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Hello for Jamilla and Jamal. And hello for everybody who is listening to us now.

So, as we always do on the podcast, we start off with an icebreaker question. So would you rather spend a year on a spaceship or a year on a submarine?

I either spend a year on a spaceship and spend a year on a submarine. I either spend a year on a lonely island in some Caribbean sea. Okay, that would be very good.

I like that. That's a better response, I think. I'd prefer that as well. I think I'd get too claustrophobic in a submarine or a spaceship. So what about you, Jamal?

It depends what I have access to on the submarine or the ship, really. I think I would get a bit seasick. It might get a bit scary down there because, you know, when you go down to the depths of the sea, it gets quite dark as well doesn't it. Whereas in space, at least you have some stars around you and you'll see the sun every now and then. So I think based on those two, I’d probably go for the spaceship.

Interesting. I'm going on the island with your Jekaterina.

There will be two of us and we will have company and it's good.

Right, so let's get into the data privacy questions. So my first question for you is, you're the director of the Data State Inspector of Latvia. Could you tell us a little bit more about your role and what kind of things that involves?

Yeah as we know, we're in the European Union. We have a data protection regulation. Like most famous words, I think, letters, GDPR, because many people know these four words. Not always they know what does that mean? But these four letters everybody knows. So GDPR prescribes that each European Union country has their own supervisory authority. In Latvia, our supervisor authority is Data State Inspectorate. Right. So what we do, we are guardians of the GDPR in Latvia.

Wow, that's a big responsibility.

For me, it's really a huge responsibility because it's not only responsibility on the people that we are working here, it's responsibility for the society, because when you work in the governmental sector, your prime role and aim is to serve the society. So in order to fulfil their lives and make their lives more comfortable and better. So that's why you have this quite, I would say hard role as a Data Protection Supervisory Authority. Because from one side you have this duty to protect privacy. But from other side, as we see in the real world, you are not always that good person because sometimes people underestimate the role and value of the privacy and they say like you are just there giving out obstacles and not allow us to live in peace.

And is it something date privacy in Latvia was it something that was kind of put a lot more into the public sphere by the GDPR or was before the GDPR were people still advocating for data privacy?

Yeah, 100% agree with a lot of those points you've made there, Jekaterina. And I think the most important thing to understand is before the GDPR came into force, it wasn't unusual where companies would kind of have a fund where they would put a little bit of money in for any data protection related fines. Before the GDPR, there wasn't really that many newspapers or media outlets reporting on this kind of stuff. And the paradigm I found most people living in was people were starting to become aware of privacy, but it didn't mean anything to anyone. But what we're seeing is a shift now where people actually value their privacy. People want control over the personal information because people are seeing how it's being used against other people, how they become victims, and how all of this digital data is so easily accessible and available and just the extent of the damage it could cause. And what Jekaterina has really pointed out very well there is, individuals that value their privacy and we can see more and more people are valuing their privacy they would actually look for those companies that they can trust with their personal information. And so GDPR, data protection, it's not about being a blocker for companies not being able to do stuff. How do you actually then use this to put your company or your organization in a position where you can cultivate that trust, inspire confidence and ultimately maximize the impact you have by winning more customers and clients.

And one thing that I want to add in all of these things, we have to have this common sense and balance. Data protection is important, but I think that what we have to look at the global picture and we have to look for these things and the implementation of the data rules with a real common sense. So what is important, what is the priority? Where are the most people are involved? And for me, of course, it's a priority to have checks and balances on the big companies so in general, how they treat this data. Because what I see, as well as a supervisory authority that we have quite many complaints of people when they try to find, you know, these little tiny things in the GDPR and start arguing that companies have to do this or governmental sector have to do this because there is some tiny things in the GDPR. But afterwards, when you start to talk to this person, it's not data protection they're interested in, they are just angry on the company or angry on the governmental sector. They want to have this satisfied and so they find this GDPR, you didn't inform me, like not even informed you didn't ask my permission or something and then we have to explain something but sometimes that if there is a governmental sector and this is prescribed by law, your permission is not needed. And because the GDPR does not prohibit to process data do you determine, just set the rules that you have to implement when you process data and I think that for the supervisory authorities as well, it's very important to have this balanced and common sense approach.

Absolutely, Jekaterina, on that balanced approach, I want to ask you, and feel free to decline to answer about a recent enforcement action we saw from the AEPD. So they fined a mail delivery company for leaving a parcel with someone's next door neighbour and talking about common sense approach. How do you feel about that?

I'm still puzzled, I will be honest with you because I haven't read this case because what is important in data protection, that in data protection, the devil is in the details. And so in order to have real comments or opinion on some case, you have to know these details because depending on these details, it will be okay or not okay. So in this case, I think it's important to check if the system of the company is built as such that it allows to give the names / surnames of the receivers to other people, to third parties, like to transmit the data to third parties or this is what the human mistake or human behaviour of one person. And in this case I would say that for me, if it's human mistake of the person, then we cannot treat systematically from the company point of view because we're all humans, we all can have a mistake. And another point of view, we had such cases when we had the claims from the people that say that there was the list of the names and surnames in the kindergarten group where the parents have to sign it and I have seen another parent's names and surnames. So I got the data that the kindergarten could not give me according to the GDPR. But in this case, if your child is going to the kindergarten group, you know these people, you know these parents, so of course you know their names and surnames. So from that list you do not get any other information and you cannot exaggerate all these requirements of the GDPR. And this is what I call this common sense and balance. So for me, if this is real human mistakes and we have to take into account, for example, if these neighbours are very, know each other, if they are friends, so there is no new information that was given. But if there is a systematic approach of the company, one company leaves your parcel next to the next door and says please just get it. So this is then the systematic mistake of the company.

Okay, thank you for showing that. So what you're saying is on the face of it, you can't really see much harm in delivering a parcel to your neighbour because they know where you live and they're probably going to know what your names are. But it could be actually we're missing some details. There could be a systematic problem with the actual provider which might be what the AEPD has identified. And until we get more clarity on those details, it's really difficult, but it is quite puzzling. Jekaterina, I have a question. So earlier you were talking about the amount of responsibility that you have in your role as an organization, as a supervisory authority, representing people's protection of data, and then you are actually the leader of that organization. And not just that, you also have to represent Latvia on the European Data Protection Board. How do you sleep at night?

Yes. Lots of juggling, lots of balancing but I really like your approach. And it's the approach that we adopt with all of our clients and we say, look, we have to take a common sense, risk based approach and we have to implement a practical and pragmatic solution to identify the risks. And it's interesting what you said, what the purpose of the GDPR was and the way I see it Jekaterina is the purpose of the GDPR was to help businesses to understand how to be responsible with people's personal information so people can trust them with it. And therefore they're more happy to share that information with the business, so we can see more businesses prospering, so we can see more individuals getting the benefits from those businesses, so we can have this economic development across the whole of the European Union.

Yeah, I can fully agree with you. For me as well, this main aim of the GDPR is to protect this human rights and to make business, to process the data properly according to the rules and transparently. So I, as a person, know that you are honest to me, that you will not use my data against me, or you will not use my data in such a way to trick me or to influence my decisions, not me not knowing about this. This was the and I think in this case, data protection has a little bit bigger role because from the data processing personal data processing depends not only on privacy as such depends many other rights. It's even too like big right of the democracy rights to vote, for example, in the parliament or municipal elections. Because when my data is used to profile me, to give me better information that are in artificial intelligence things I would like. So I get only a small amount of information. It could change my opinion on something. And I will go and I will vote for some things or some people for whom I would not be voting if my personal data would not be processing or my attitude or some hate speeches. So all of these things it influences, data processing influences my other rights and this is the field I think that that's why GDPR was created so that processing would be as such that do not influence in a negative way my other rights that I will still have this free choice, free will, free understanding.

That's very powerful even though you said it in such a nice calm way, that is so powerful. The purpose of the GDPR is to make sure that when people are businesses and organizations are handling your data, they're not actually impacting and interfering on the other rights, which they could inadvertently do by misusing or abusing the personal information by learning how you behave, by profiling you, by trying to use artificial intelligence to guess what might influence you to go a certain way or not. And we've seen that, we've seen that with Cambridge Analytica, both in the US and here in the UK as well. So what you're saying has a massive impact on democracy and also on lots of other areas as well. So it's very powerful actually.

That’s why I think that the GDPR has to focus on, the supervisory authority they have to focus on this bigger issue, bigger companies and not maybe they're quarrel between the two neighbours on some web camera that was installed on the doorbell.

Yeah, I agree with you. Maybe the Spanish supervisory authorities are listening as well and can give us a bit more clarification on that. Do you think and feel free to decline to answer, some supervisory authorities where they receive the fines have ulterior motives?

I didn't really understand.

For example, in the UK when the ICO goes and issues a fine against the company for violating data protection regulations, the treasury will collect that fine. Whereas let's say our friends in Spain, the AEPD, they will actually collect the fines themselves and we can see that they're one of the most aggressive supervisory authorities in Europe. One has to ask the question does the fact that they collect the fines compared to some of the other supervisory authorities who don't, have any influence on how aggressive they are?

I don't think that it has to have influence because it would be like an honest yeah, it has to be not depending on which budget the sum goes. You and me as a supervisory authority have to be clear, have to be trustful and have to fulfil the law. Like even if we put the fine about the breach, this fine, the aim of this fine to show the company that you were mistaken, you haven't done it correctly and now you have to do it correctly and this is like compensation for the society because you breach the rights of the society. So it's not because I want to have a higher salaries, it's a different reason. So I think that different countries choose their own path how to go with these fines but I really don't think that this influence the actions of the supervisory authority. What influence the actions of the supervisory authority is resources that is given from the country to supervisory authority. The bigger the supervisory authority is, the more power they have, the more resources they have to have some checks, to have investigations. So this is the criteria when we want why some institutions are more active in this finding because for example, our authority is very small authority, we have only 34 people and we have to fulfil all the obligations the same as supervisory authority in Spain or in Italy or in France which have quite more people. Of course, we have a different amount of the citizens which were taken care on but still as a supervisory authority, data protection regulation, it's like some Schengen investigation. So we have other functions as well which is very similar to the old institutions, even the participation, the EDPB level so of course we have maybe only one person who is doing international cooperation and this person is accountable for everything and they cannot cover this in a very maybe so deeper way. So I think that this, when the actions of DPA depends on their resource.

Thanks for clarifying that because every networking event, every conference I've gone to, every time people get together, this is a conversation that comes up. But what we've heard from Jekaterina there, all us privacy pros is that it all comes down to the resources. Because look, each data protection authority has a finite amount of resources. Some might be a little bit better resourced than others. And if they are more adequately resourced, it means they can then go and do more investigations, they can do more enforcement actions and they can look at more companies. Whereas when you have finite amount of resources, given all of the other responsibilities that come with running a supervisory authority, you have to pick and choose where to prioritize that finite resources. So, Jekaterina, I know how much of a difficult job you have to do, and I saw how busy you were when I came to see you for a few days in Latvia as well. One of the challenges that we come across with a lot of our mentees, our privacy leaders, so people who are managing small teams or heading up the function of data protection in their organization is they have this feeling of overwhelm. And I spoke to you, and I'm speaking to you now, and you have this like air of calm and grace around you. What top tips do you have for some of our leaders in the academy that you can share with them on how to achieve this balance of finding peace within the role, and also when they're off the role as well, so they don't have to feel that overwhelming burner.

I'm quite an emotional person, so I feel quite overwhelmed as well. But then you have to say you have to start to talk to yourself. What I'm always doing, maybe for other people it will sound weird, but it's very good to talk to yourself. And first of all, you have to set the priorities. What is your priorities? And second one, after the priorities, you have to set what you will not do. And then you have to be quite honest with yourself and you have to be quite brave because it's very hard to say to other people, I will not do it because there is some things that you understand that, as you mentioned, you cannot cover everything. So you choose the priorities. We go to the priorities and at least the priorities, we are sure that we fulfil them. As me, as a person, as a leader, as the head of the organization and the organization as such. So second one we say quite honestly and ultimately that we will not do this, this and this. And third one, for me, you have to have the balance between the work and your private life and it also depends on yourself. As I always say, I do not work, for example, on Saturday and Sunday, never, ever, because you have to have these two days, your brains go out of your work. And sometimes I'm joking that when I am on vacation or on a Sunday or Saturday, I am a lady, I do not know nothing about data protection, do not ask me, I do not know how to do it. But then you have like five days when you are very intense, when you do the things that you need to do. And as well, I think that you have to also understand that you cannot change everything, you cannot do everything. So you have to be content with about what you have done and do not think about what I haven't done. So switch this focus from the negative to positive, and be as well pleased about what you have done and your team have done, because without your team, you are also nobody without your team.

Wow. Those are some powerful tips, you should write a book on this. I'm sure so many people have been inspired by it. So, just to summarize, Jekaterina, what I understood and what I've learned actually from what you said is, first of all, you have to talk to yourself. And one of the things I encourage and of one of the things I actually do, but one of the things that I get on my Mentees and Accelerator program to do is to journal on a daily basis. And I find that is like, the way of you talking to yourself, getting your thoughts out, focusing on how you're feeling, what went well, what could have been better, what did I learn today? And have that conversation with yourself. The next thing you said is, you have to get clear on your priorities, like what is more important and what is most important and what is less important. And then once you understand what your priorities are, you have to have discipline by saying, these are the things I will not do. And the challenge with that is, it's difficult to say no to your colleagues, it's difficult to say no to your peers, it's difficult to say no to others around you. But you have to get disciplined, and you have to get good at saying, these are the things that I will not do or we will not do, and make that very clear and enforce your boundaries. And then you said, what we need to do is make sure that we are honest and brave, be honest with yourself, and also have that bravery and the courage to know that you're doing exactly what you need to do based on the priorities and based on how well you've understood yourself. And then you said, this is very important for me actually, is having that work life balance right, and making sure that the weekends and the evenings are actually free, because there is only so much your brain can process without it becoming inefficient or ineffective. And by recharging, then you can go and give that boost during the working hours and during your working time and really focus on doing that deep work that you need to do to get that. And the final thing I took away from you, Jekaterina is it's about what we focus on. So we can choose to focus on the great things and all of the things that we have achieved, which will inspire us and empower us, or we can choose to focus on what we haven't achieved and things that went wrong, which will only break our spirit, demoralize us, and lead to more negative consequences. So thank you for those top tips. We're definitely going to have to do a post on that Jamilla.

Jekaterina, you organized the conference Personal Data Future Perspectives that just happened a couple of months ago in Latrvia. I saw all of Jamal's posts about it, I saw so many people posting about it. Why did you feel like it was important to hold a conference like that?

This is the second conference in such level, in such way that we organized. First was in the last year when our authority had a 20-year anniversary, when we discussed what we want to do is we are 20 years old, what we want to do, how we can proceed in the future. We thought that in many cases it's very important to talk about things even not like to get maybe some answers or conversation and have a resolving of the problem but talk about things on the future to understand different opinions, to have this dialogue between governmental private, between privacy pros and between the businesses, between the scientific things, talk about some new things that come into our lives because technology is changing very fast and we have some new things which are not covered maybe by law or we do not know how to deal with them. So that's why we had this conference Personal Data Future Perspective, where we tried to cover some topics which are quite new and on which, for example, we know that we do not have some very straight answers. Yes, no, but we want to talk about them. Because when you talk about this, you get opinions of other people, you get the broader picture and then you can have this more better policy approach on this. So that's why we have done two of them and I hope in the future we will do another one as well. But for the next year now we are thinking about it, maybe we have like one year break, because if something goes very often, like people get bored of this. So maybe we will next year, we think the switch off, something maybe on the working groups, small working groups for businesses, discussing some real practical problems with them. But maybe have a conference, we still don’t know, we are still planning.

I vote conference because I'll tell you why, when you do have an annual event, everyone will look forward to it and everyone knows it's a nice chance for everyone to meet up. But push that aside, the conference that you put together, the guests that you got, the topics that were discussed and some of the conversations I was engaging in and I could hear happening in the networking area is fascinating. And what you managed to do was to tie the businesses, tie privacy professionals, bring the European Data Protection supervisor, bring supervisory authorities, everyone on the same playing field. There was no judgment. Everyone was free to ask whatever questions they wanted openly. And it was an opportunity to actually learn and hear the approach and say ah, that makes sense. So I would really encourage you to keep doing what you're doing. It was absolutely amazing. And even if you go and look at the YouTube videos, you can see how many people that couldn't attend the conference are actually benefiting from some of the speakers, from some of the panel sessions. And the discussions that you opened up the floor to were fascinating. I can't remember, I think our panel discussion was scheduled for about, however long it was scheduled for, but it overran and there were still people wanting to discuss and it was really, really fascinating. So please, I encourage you to keep doing those because you're bringing great people together. What we just want to do is and we're going to help you this time, next time we have a conference, to us, we're going to tell everyone on the privacy pros. And we want to get more people from around the world into Latvia, into the conference, and really learn as a community of how we can take things further and how are we going to deal with some of the challenges that we don't even know how well the technology works here, or even how the technology works.

Thank you for the good word.

What I'm hearing from Jamal is we're going to have a staff work trip to Latvia next year if you do another conference. So please do that would be great.

Yes, we’ll come and help wherever we can Jekaterina.

Yes, definitely.

Thank you.

What was your favourite part of the conference?

Honestly, for the organizer, it's hard to find the better part was when was everything was finished. When everything was finished and everybody went home, then you’re like whew, we have done it.

Plus, when Jamal was talking.

The sense of achievement, the sense of accomplishment and the relief that, yes, it's all done and there's nothing else to think about anymore. We can go off high alert isn't it?

But for me, the good feedback after the conference when people said, as you said, that it was worth it, it was interesting. This was the better relief for me, is the better part for me, because then you understand that you have done it in the benefit of the society and the society got this benefit. So you have done your job good.

Absolutely. And you're bringing people together. So, like, for example, I met Anna and Victoria and a couple of others, and since then we've been speaking and we've been coming up with ideas on how we can better serve people and taking things forward. But if you hadn't put us together, then those things would never have happened. So you have to kind of see this is just the beginning and you're having like a nuclear fission mushrooming effect on the impact that you're making. And, you know, thank you so much for putting not just this one, the largest one together. And these kind of initiatives from supervisory authorities, they're very powerful because it sends the right message to privacy professionals. It sends the right message to businesses, and it also sends the right message to other government departments who kind of hide behind grey doors or ceiling sometimes it's, here we are, this is what we do, and we're open. We're open for business, and we're here to help you. So engage with us.

It's like plus points to have the conference next year.

I encourage other supervisory authorities listening to this, to also think about putting similar things together. Because, look, we have the IAPP that does stuff, and then we have other industry conferences that do stuff, but they're very commercialized. I don't mean that in a way to detract from what they're doing, but ultimately, it's from a commercial perspective they're doing that. When you get supervisory authority doing it, you actually have much more clarity and much more trust and belief in that. Like, we're not just going there to see what there is to buy or where the vendors are, because it wasn't a commercial event at all. It was purely, we are here to give value, we're here to have the conversations, and let's start thinking about these things. Jekaterina, is there anything that you want to share about why you're so passionate about privacy?

I think because privacy is a value. And what I mentioned to you, through privacy and personal data protection, our other rights are influenced. And I think that all people are deserved to live in the free world with the free choices and to be free to choose something. And so our personal data is a part of us. That's why they have to be processed and treated equally, honestly and according to the law. So that's why I'm working in this field, maybe to show people that your privacy values, it's not about something to hide, it's about you and honestly, it's about your right, really, to hide something, to be your own self and to not open to everybody and to not be influenced by others.

Thank you very much. Last thing on our podcast, we like to ask our guests to ask Jamal a question. So it can be anything. You can ask him anything.

I would ask him, why are you doing privacy?

Why am I doing this?

Why what is your reason?

So I have a vision that my baby daughter, Amy, she's going to grow up in a world where every woman, every man and every child will be able to enjoy freedom over their personal information. And for that to happen, every single organization, every single business, every single government department on Earth needs to be empowered to adopt honest privacy practices. So I set up the consultancy to do that, and I was like, we're going to go and change the world. But very quickly, I realized it's not going to be even a drop on the ocean, even if I spent the rest of my life and let's say I live to about 70 working. What's the retirement age in the UK now? I don't even know. Let's say I work up until 70 or whatever it is, we will still not be able to do that. But what I discovered is if we bring and create a community of like-minded professionals, if we then help them to be the best they can be and really go out and serve their organizations and their clients, then together we can have a massive impact. And that's what the Privacy Pros is all about, that's what the Privacy Pros podcast is about, it’s about attracting like-minded people. So together we can really go and make sure every organization has adopted those honest privacy practices, is treating people's information in a way that's respected, and then eventually, every man, every woman and every child will be able to enjoy freedom over their personal information.

This is a very good thing, honestly. I'm sure you will have a good benefit. And you said it will not be just drop, even a drop matters, but I think it will be bigger than drop if you will proceed all your life till pension.

We're already having waves, so the waves are coming in and we can see businesses are surfing those waves. I'm so grateful we have over, what is it, nearly 200 people in our community now from all over the world who are really pioneering and driving change in the business. We've got privacy leaders, we've got people looking into getting into privacy, and we've got people who have been doing this for a couple of years now. So we have the full spectrum of people and we're just attracting more and more likeminded people into the community every day. And when you come and you do podcasts like this, it gives us an opportunity to reach out to more audiences and together we can definitely drive that change. Jekaterina, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for making the time to come and speak to us and our listeners. And from everyone at the Privacy Pros Academy, we wish you all the best and we look forward to coming to the conference in Latvia next year.

Plus ten points for the conference.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, like and share so you're notified when a new episode is released.

Remember to join the Privacy Pros Academy Facebook group where we answer your questions.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you're leaving with some great things that will add value on your journey as a world class Privacy Pro.

Please leave us a four or five star review.

And if you'd like to appear on a future episode of our podcast, or have.

A suggestion for a topic you'd like.

To hear more about, please send an email to team@kazient.co.uk

Until next time, peace be with you.