To trust is to put your faith in someone's honesty and integrity. The decision to trust typically is based on a general expectation that someone's ethics and principles, possibly along with what they stand for and the genuineness of their actions, reflect your own.
It's a big ‘ole gift to give – trust. And, as such, the recipient should handle it with some care and maybe a bit of reverence. Among all the critical components and thoughts and feelings on which many of our most rewarding and satisfying relationships are based, trust ranks quite high.
This is true not only of our most vital personal associations, but also of our business partnerships, whether within our own companies or with those that we have with other organizations and the pros that comprise them. And for quite a few of these bonds, trust directly correlates to our expectations of the privacy and security surrounding the sundry and countless interchanges we have as part of them.
| ...trust, privacy and security are top of mind...”
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In fact, for a lot of us, trust, privacy and security are top of mind when it comes to our dealings with people, private companies, government entities and other organizations. The problem is, as we peruse both this edition's cover story by Associate Editor Teri Robinson and a supporting feature by Editorial Assistant Ashley Carman, these important aspects of the relationships we have with businesses and our government have been compromised to such a degree that most of us are feeling huge losses – including not only a demise of trust, privacy and security, but of control as well.
As Ashley Carman points out in her piece, a study from Pew Research Center shows that 91 percent of adult respondents believe they've lost complete control over how personal information is collected and used by the entities with which they deal. Another 80 percent say U.S. citizens should be worried about government monitoring of both phone calls and internet connections. Another research project from March reveals that likely as a result of these concerns, millions of folks are changing how they use various technologies, including search engines and email.
According to the experts quoted in our cover story, on top of private citizens' worries, security and privacy officers within companies have their own share of trepidations, including such things as dealing with government requests for information about customers/clients or more, the legal ramifications of moving data across borders or how they meet privacy requirements noted in European Safe Harbor laws. Add to this the myriad ways companies gather data and the sheer volumes they can amass, and the worries grow exponentially.
The problem of maintaining trust, privacy and security is extremely complex, but as this edition's features showcase, it is one that must be mulled and tackled with the greatest of aplomb and deference. Failing to do so, could vastly reshape the intense demands on companies and already is resulting in a search and the embrace of technologies and services that allow for citizens to wrench back some control over how they dole out trust and just what information they keep private. Both government entities and the companies bent on collecting more and more data on the general populace definitely can trust in that.
Meantime, we welcome to SC Magazine's bullpen Robert Abel, our new online coordinator and reporter, who will help in the continued development of our online presence, and we say a sad goodbye to our long-standing Online Editor Marcos Colón, whose replacement will be announced shortly. But, while Marcos is no longer with us in the office on a daily basis, he and members of the crew still gather for NYC excursions when respective work days are done. We wish both these gents only the best in their future endeavors.
