(L-R): Keith Enright, Chief Privacy Officer, Google; Jane Horvath, Chief Privacy Officer, Apple; Kalinda Raina, VP and Chief Privacy Officer, LinkedIn; Dominque Shelton Leipzig, Partner, Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Leader, Global Data Innovation and Ad Tech Privacy and Data Management practices, Mayer Brown. Photo courtesy of RSA Conference, copyright RSA Conference.

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple, Google, and LinkedIn all agree that privacy and security are set to join environmental, social, and governance (ESG) as important models consumers and enterprises use to select and judge organizations they work with. That consensus was highlighted as part of a top-heavy keynote discussion at this week’s RSA Conference.

Kalinda Raina, VP and Chief Privacy Officer at LinkedIn, said that the inclusion of privacy into that acronym has been a shift she has seen over the past 10 years.

“We've been really trying hard to grow the awareness of privacy, the understanding of privacy in our organizations, and now we are beginning to see the public show interest as well,” Raina said. “And I think that the really exciting shift that has been happening is people's awareness and judgment of companies based on how they're handling data, how we're thinking about these issues, how they are treating privacy, and quite honestly all the things that go into trust, security, safety, privacy, how you’re approaching the environment, how you're approaching diversity.”

Raina explained that the next 20 years of the “commercial internet” are going to require increased trust from consumers and enterprises in the organizations that are providing those security systems for the internet.

“I was just having a conversation with someone yesterday who said it should be ESPG, with the ‘P’ for privacy,” Raina said.

Keith Enright, Chief Privacy Officer at Google, took the topic more globally and topically by stating that technology needs to play an important role in maintaining and protecting “democratic values and democratic institutions around the world. … The responsibility of technology providers in that conversation has never been more front and center.”

Enright also noted that the investment community is taking greater interest in these moves as well as poor ESG and privacy decisions can impact an organization’s bottom line. This was echoed by panel moderator Dominque Shelton Leipzig from law firm Mayer Brown, who said her firm was seeing questionnaires from investment firms like BlackRock and Vanguard “about the state of privacy for an enterprise.”

“This feels like an inevitability to me and I don't think it's a flash in the pan,” Enright said. “This is something we all need to responsibly engage with and I think it's going to be a really interesting time for practitioners in the privacy and security space because we're going to be essential elements in the conversation.”

Jane Horvath, Chief Privacy Officer at Apple, succinctly stated that privacy was an “ESG value at Apple. Privacy is a corporate value at Apple. All of our execs are held to account for privacy as part of our ESG values.”

Other vendors have made similar connections between privacy and ESG initiatives.

Cisco’s VP of Corporate Affairs Mary de Wysocki earlier this year noted that with more than 85% of the world’s web traffic traversing its servers it has a responsibility to “ensure that our technology is made, sold, and used responsibly.”

This includes prioritizing data security and privacy, which are among the 18 ESG topics de Wysocki said are important to Cisco’s stakeholders.

“Privacy is more than just a compliance obligation. It is a fundamental human right and business imperative that is critical to building and maintaining customer trust,” de Wysocki said. This means Cisco’s obligation to secure its customers’ data grows as those customers work across various locations and face increasing threats, she explained.

Despite common outcomes touted by Apple, Google, and LinkedIn, how companies get there remain anything but. This was highlighted by a slice of contentiousness initiated by Horvath when she took a dig at the “other” platform.

“As a result of App Review, we have 98% less malware than the other platform,” Horvath said in describing Apple’s App Review program that evaluates all applications developers want to place into its iOS App Store.

That comment drew a quick reaction from Enright.

“Jane and I agree on most things, but I think it’s important to call out iOS as well as on Android through a laptop you can install applications from the internet,” Enright said. “We do think you need to balance the benefits of allowing platforms to compete on privacy, and on this issue specifically allowing competing app stores. We think the benefits are self-evident and I would challenge this statistic that is frequently put out about 98% less malware. We haven’t seen peer-reviewed, recognized research to support that. … In general we agree on more than we disagree on, but I do think we can respectfully disagree on this notion that allowing healthy competition in terms of playing platforms and app stores still seems like the way.”