Intro: 00:01

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

Intro: 00:06

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

Intro: 00:17

Hear about the latest news and developments in the world of Privacy.

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Discover fascinating insights from Leading Global Privacy

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Professionals and hear real stories and top tips from the people who have been where you want to get to.

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

Intro: 00:41

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

Jamilla: 00:57

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Privacy Pros Academy podcast. My name is Jamilla, and I'm a data privacy analyst at Kazient Privacy Experts. I'm primarily responsible for conducting research on current and upcoming legislation as well as any key developments and decisions by supervisory authorities. With me today is my co-host is Jamal Ahmed who is a Fellow of Information Privacy and CEO of Kazient Privacy Experts. Jamal is an established and comprehensively qualified privacy professional with a demonstrable track record solving enterprise-wide data privacy and data security challenges for SMEs through complex global organizations. To date, he has provided privacy and GDPR compliance solutions to organizations across six continents and in over 30 jurisdictions, helping to safeguard the personal data of over a billion data subjects worldwide. Welcome, Jamal.

Jamal: 01:42

Hey, Jamal.

Jamilla: 01:43

So our guest today, we are delighted to welcome Aron Seader, who brings nearly 15 years of technical and leadership experience to Eclypses. As the Senior Director of Core Engineering, Aron has experience working as an engineer in multiple sectors, including solar energy, fiber optics, and mechanical engineering. Across his experience, Aron has led and organized teams on in-depth projects which require maintaining and building relationships with clients, information and research gathering and hands-on technical and mechanical work. At Eclypses, Aron leads the core engineering team, overseeing implementation and software development projects and conducting product management of Eclypses MTE technology. Aron works closely with the technical, sales, marketing, and executive teams to ensure that Eclipse core technology and messaging operates smoothly with the most UpToDate software and information. Aron lives in Colorado with his family and enjoys all the great door activities that Colorado has to offer. Welcome, Aron. How are you?

Aron: 02:41

Awesome. Thanks for having me. Very well. How are you?

Jamilla: 02:44

Good, thank you.

Jamal: 02:44

Aron, as Jamila was telling us a little bit about yourself there. Wow, what an introduction. You've been very busy over the last 15 years.

Aron: 02:52

Thank you. Yes. As she said, I started off in mechanical engineering and designing fiber optic cables and that kind of led to Eclypses kind of just by happenstance and started out developing physical demonstrations over here and then grew into software and data privacy and leading the team.

Jamal: 03:08

Amazing. I'm sure you've got a wealth of experience and so many valuable nuggets you can drop for us today. But before we get into that, Jamilla always loves to start off with an ice breaker. Jamilla, what's your ice breaker for today?

Jamilla: 03:20

Yeah, so today's ice breaker question what is the best book you've ever read?

Aron: 03:24

That's a tough one. I don't know. Best book ever. But the one that sticks out recently in the last year or so is Ready Player One. I know that's been made into a movie and stuff since I read it, but still I loved how the relation to old video games and things like that. At our old office, we actually had a stand-up arcade with all the old games and things, so it was fun to relate that in a book.

Jamilla: 03:50

I think being a true millennial, mine will always be the Harry Potter series.

Aron: 03:55

Oh, sure, yeah, definitely.

Jamilla: 04:00

I love them. What about you, Jamal?

Jamal: 04:02

It's a tough one because it's my best book in what context? Recently I've been reading lots of business type of books. So for the people who are listening and listening to business, I think the one that's standing out for me right now is The E myth by Michael Gerber, and it really talks about how to really customize and get some real focus on the way your business is structured so you're not running around like a headless chicken.

Jamilla: 04:24

Nice. Different recommendations for whoever's listening, go and read. So let's get into the proper questions. Aron, you have a lot of experience in different fields, but why the passion now for privacy?

Aron: 04:36

Yeah, great question. I kind of got into Eclypses, as I mentioned before, kind of by happenstance they needed somebody to develop physical demos and oversee some outsourced manufacturing and things like that. And once I got in there, data privacy is one of the, I think, coolest things that kind of goes unnoticed. Right? There's tons of data about everyone out there, and it's a very crucial thing to make sure that that's all protected and protected at the right layer. Eclypses, we strive to do it a little differently than other places, but it's very important in the world that we live in that your data is protected and controlled and those types of things because it tells a lot about you nowadays and there's lots of data out.

Jamilla: 05:17

And what do you think of the current kind of attitudes, I guess, towards data privacy in the states?

Aron: 05:23

There’s a lot of push towards more privacy for data. Striking that balance between people being controlled and keeping data private, but also using data for legitimate business needs is a fine line to walk, and we're all trying to find that across the whole world. And GDPR has really led in some of those efforts. And I think the US is implementing some very similar things and doing some things kind of as GDPR as a role model. CCPA is very close to GDPR. California, US is kind of doing it at the state level, so letting states, kind of figure out what that means for them and then kind of working that up to the federal level.

Jamal: 05:58

Do you think we’ll see a federal privacy that went anytime soon?

Aron: 06:01

in place right now. That was: 2015

Jamal: 06:11

Okay, and have you been following the recent discussions between Europe and US to replace the broken privacy shield?

Aron: 06:19

Yeah, I don't know too much about that, but I think that the efforts are good there, but I don't have too much information.

Jamal: 06:26

Yeah, I was a bit sceptical as well. It's good to see the discussions and the announcement, but there's nothing we can actually read to see if it has any merit or not. So I guess the fact that there's some will and indication that means it's probably priority, and I look forward to finding a solution. It's super important that Europe and the UK can easily share data with the businesses in the US. Because we rely on the US for a lot of the software. Right. Most of the businesses here, every single business I work with, have at least three to five vendors based in the US. And they're all transmitting personal information. So it's super important that we find a solution to that as quickly as possible, I believe.

Aron: 07:05

I agree, yeah, I think it's very important.

Jamilla: 07:07

So, Aron, could you tell us more about Eclypses and what kind of things you do and why it's an amazing privacy solution?

Aron: 07:14

Yeah, I'd love to. Here at Eclypses, we focus on data protection at the application level. So we offer a compiled library that gets integrated into an application and protects the data as soon as it's generated. So it's eliminating the need to rely on the communication protocol or the operating system or those types of things. Application developers can take it into their own hands and make sure that their data is secure and protected and their customers data is secure and protected regardless of where it goes in the world or how it's communicated. And it works on a synchronized endpoint type solution. So we have two endpoints and they're the only two that can talk to each other. It really isolates the problem of data privacy and makes it so that only the specific person you want to know that information is the only one that can decipher it.

Jamal: 08:01

That sounds like a pretty powerful solution.

Aron: 08:03

hat we hear all about, right.: 2021

Jamal: 08:31

Okay, that sounds amazing. So who is the solution ideal for? For what kind of businesses are we talking about?

Aron: 08:37

We have developed it in C and it's very small, very fast, so it can really fit anywhere. So how do we target the people who are going to have the most benefit? And we've gone after mobile and web its kind of our primary and IoT is also a secondary primary. So getting those mobile apps and web pages that have inherently and historically lower amounts of security, giving those up to speed and up to snuff because our library is so small and nimble, we can actually embedded into web pages and the user doesn't have to download any extensions or anything like that. So we can protect data at the field level within a web page and all that data is secured to the server without the end user knowing anything about it.

Jamal: 09:19

Wow, it sounds very nice and simple and it sounds super protective. You're saying as soon as the user comes in, let's say I've got the solution on our website, when someone signing off one of our courses, right, as soon as they come into the website, they start filling out their personal information, let's say their phone number, their email address, all of that gets protected straight away.

Aron: 09:35

Yeah, exactly. And it can be secured individually and then it still of course goes through all of the best practices that are in place https, tls those things. But we protect the data inside the tunnel. So if the tunnel is corrupted somehow or somebody gets in there, the data is still protected and it's all through WASM web assembly wrapper and just gets embedded into your JavaScript.

Jamal: 09:56

That sounds amazing. And how easy is it for a business to adopt these solutions? Do we need lots of specialists like you in house or can we just have some really basic IT support?

Aron: 10:08

It doesn't take much support at all. We have a professional services group and implementation team that's my counterpart, that really takes over the implementation and we put on the white gloves and really make sure that the customer is taking care of it. Doesn't take much. And the nice thing about Eclipses is we had a very solid engineering foundation and now we’ve kind of built up the business around that. So the APIs and the way you interface have been able to be refined, so they're very easy to use, very simple calls in order to get it up and going in your environment.

Jamal: 10:38

So what you're saying is any smaller or medium sized business could actually consider this as a possible solution to keep their data both secure and private without having to worry about too much about how much IT resources they have internally. It should just be able to plug and play.

Aron: 10:54

Yes, exactly. And that was our whole goal. We have the expertise, so let's package it up so that you don't need the expertise, too. I think that's the biggest hesitation and fear for companies is, oh, now I need a cryptologist on staff in order to implement these encryptions or implement these data securities where we've kind of bundled out in a nice, easy to use package, so you don't need that expertise.

Jamal: 11:15

Awesome.

Jamal: 11:16

We are all about making things easy peasy at the Privacy Pros Academy and also at Kazient. And so this is amazing. I'm sure there'll be so many clients that I can introduce this product to, and I'd love to explore a little bit more of that. But tell us, what is FIPS 143 certification and why is that important?

Aron: 11:32

Yeah, great. FIP stands for the Federal Information Processing Standard Publication 140-3 and its all about cryptographic algorithms. NEST is our government body that oversees data privacy and those types of things. And FIPS 143 is a way that people like us software, but it also covers hardware as well can verify that anything cryptographic related is being done correctly. We use open source and commonly used algorithms, AES and Shah at the base of our technology, and FIPS really just ensures that we're using those.

Jamal: 12:06

So if anyone is listening and they think, you know what, that software sounds amazing. That solution sounds amazing, but I'm not really sure if it's up to scratch. What you're saying is it meets this FIPS standard and therefore anyone can be assured that it is the gold standard when it comes to cryptology.

Aron: 12:20

Exactly. It's a way of not just us saying, hey, it's great. We had a third-party laboratory run it through its paces, make sure that it's completely secure and completely legit.

Jamal: 12:30

All right, that sounds amazing.

Jamilla: 12:31

Aron a lot of the people that are listening to the podcast are probably starting out in a career or looking to change careers. So what do you look for when you're hiring in your industry? Could you give some top tips to people listening?

Aron: 12:44

Definitely. I think the biggest thing is a passion for learning, right. Being an engineer and switching fields and switching industries myself, what I've realized is having a degree and that piece of paper that says, hey, you can work hard, basically, is all it says. But everything in the real world is learned. Right. So I learned how to code when I got to Eclypses and learned how to manage a team. And those types of having that aspiration to continually learn and continue to better yourself is what I really want. It helps to have some basis in the skill set that I'm asking you to do, but that aptitude for making yourself better. And always learning is really key.

Jamilla: 13:20

How was that process of learning how to code? I think I've seen a lot of campaigns trying to get more people, especially younger kids and things, to learn how to code. Do you think that that's something that's important?

Aron: 13:31

Yeah, definitely. I mean, a lot of our world today right, is technology and based in code. So understanding what something is doing at the heart of it helps you better understand. Maybe it's a vulnerability or maybe it's something that I shouldn't be a part of or those types of things. I think having that fundamental understanding, just like having a fundamental understanding of how anything works. Know a little bit about how your air conditioner or heater works, right? You can know that. Oh, maybe I can just tweak this one thing instead of throw the whole thing away.

Jamilla: 14:01

Yeah.

Jamal: 14:02

I just want to go back to Aron's key point there about the passion for learning. And at the Privacy Pros Academy, we're building a community of ambitious professionals who are going to come together to empower businesses, to adopt honest privacy practices. And when you were talking about that passion for learning, you said you switched career many times. You learned coding and how to manage people. I would perceive that comes from the ambition you have within you. Can you tell us about what it is that actually motivates you and drives you to strive to be better every day?

Aron: 14:30

Yeah, for me, it's a real passion for problem solving and understanding why? I'm always asking why. I'm trying to get to the bottom of something. Even when talking with people, why did they ask that question, it helps you better understand where they're coming from, maybe what they're truly asking. But that goes for technology and anything. I'm always taking things apart and trying to understand how it works and those types of things. So I think that's really what drives me.

Jamal: 14:56

Thank you for sharing. Jamilla I know you're super hard working, you're super ambitious. What drives you?

Jamilla: 15:00

Is it bad to save money? At this point?

Jamal: 15:02

No.

Jamilla: 15:07

Seeing the cost of my electricity bill that's just gone up by double. That is quite motivating. Wow.

Aron: 15:12

Double.

Jamal: 15:13

That's amazing in a bad way.

Jamilla: 15:14

I'm always very motivated to do volunteer work. So seeing that I've helped people, that drives me quite a lot. I think.

Jamal: 15:22

So is it contribution?

Jamilla: 15:24

Yeah. Giving back?

Jamal: 15:26

Yeah. Because let me say, for someone that volunteers as much as you do, because every time I talk to you, I'm running after this volunteering session or that, and you say money drives you, I think maybe you’re trying to get away from the electricity bill right now, but I'm not sure that's the thing that gets you out of bed.

Jamilla: 15:37

Yeah. I want to say helping others, but that sounds very cheesy.

Jamal: 15:40

But if it's true for you, then there's nothing wrong with it.

Jamilla: 15:43

What about you, Jamal?

Jamal: 15:44

I think definitely helping people, inspiring people to be better, unleashing their potential, being the best they can possibly, and coming together to make a difference, having an impact, having a life full of purpose and meaning. I think that's what really drives me, it’s making sure there's some legacy to be left behind.

Jamilla: 15:59

All very inspirational. Here's some interaction that our listeners can do. Comment below. What drives and inspires you? Getting some interaction in for our listeners,

Jamal: 16:08

There you go.

Jamilla: 16:09

So, Aron, why are you passionate about putting control of data back in the hands of the people?

Aron: 16:15

Yeah, I think that's a huge topic. I believe that it's data about you, so you should have more control and more insight into where and how that data is used. I think there are several companies that are doing a great job. We have a couple of partner companies that are smaller start ups that are trying to achieve that. When you go to the bar, for instance, for the pub, for a beer, the bouncer or whoever's at the door doesn't necessarily need to know your address and need to know your birthday. They just need to know that you're over 21. So kind of putting that control back into you or limiting the amount of data that's shared or how often it's shared to even doctor's office. If you change doctors, if you keep that central repository and just let them have access to it, then you can cut off that access and give access to somebody else if you decide to change doctors, that type of thing, I think that's important. I think that's where the world is headed.

Jamilla: 17:11

I think that's something that we've had a lot of questions and comments over, especially in the last two years with COVID. I know we had COVID passports becoming a thing briefly in the UK. So have you seen kind of changes due to COVID in the States and what are your opinions on that?

Aron: 17:28

Yeah, I think that there is there were definitely several companies that we talked to, they were trying to do the COVID passport as well, or the automated screening machines and things like that, which it's important to keep all that data private as well, because it can be used to track you where you've been. It’s very sensitive data. I think that COVID definitely has increased the amount of focus on data privacy, especially for the increase in remote working. I think that's driving it more so, because our businesses are realizing that we have all these people working from who knows where. Can we ensure that our PII, that our proprietary information is kept safe and not spread to the other people at Starbucks?

Jamilla: 18:12

Where do you think that line is? Between giving enough information that you keep other people safe, but then also keeping your privacy rights?

Aron: 18:22

That's a tough one. That's a fine line. There needs to be legitimate business reasons for having data and using data. We all enjoy conveniences that businesses provide based off that data. So you can't say, no one can have my data ever, because then you'll lose out on a lot of what we've created over the last several decades.

Jamilla: 18:43

Yeah. What are your thoughts on that, Jamal?

Jamal: 18:46

Well, as you know, I've been a very strong campaigner against having COVID passports. I don't believe individuals need to be tracked. And I don't think we should be discriminating based on the choices that they've made about whether they choose to take a shot of some random substances into the body or not. Whether people do or not, I think that's an individual choice, but they should not be discriminated for it. And there's lots of people that have health conditions and health reasons why they can't take them. Is it really fair to have a two-tier society based on somebody's medical status, based on the medical privacy? Should those things not be kept private? If you want to hear more about this, there are so many videos I've put on YouTube where I've been interviewed by media channels across the world on my opinion on this. So we'll stick a link into our YouTube channel and you can catch up on all my opinions, views and the debates on that.

Jamilla: 19:36

Cool. Aron, what is your favourite part of your job?

Aron: 19:40

My favourite part of the job is getting the customer to have the Ah Ah moment. That's very satisfying when you're talking through the technology or telling them why it's important to secure the data at the application level. When they finally get it and they're like, oh, that's what I've been missing all these years. That's really cool.

Jamilla: 19:59

And what's your favourite part of your job Jamal?

Jamal: 20:01

The favourite part of my job, I really enjoy the mentoring and the coaching at the academy more than anything else. That's what really inspires me. It's when you see people and they've come in feeling a little bit confused, not feeling as confident as they like to be, trying to figure out how to memorize stuff, or they've got some theoretical knowledge but not understanding how to apply it. And then when you take them through the mentoring program and they transform and come out the other end and they're this confident, ambitious, eager person ready to go. They don't necessarily now need to feel like they have to memorize stuff. They know how stuff applies, they can explain stuff. You can see that the whole complexion has changed and there's a whole new energy about them. That's the favourite part of my job is seeing that transformation. The moment that penny drops half way doing the program and suddenly they're like a new person. They are two inches taller. There's so much love and so much more bold and they're so much more happy, not just in their work, but in all areas of their life. And they get so many comments from people complimenting them, saying, hey, what's changing? You sound a lot more confident now. You're a lot more positive these days. That transformation for me is the best thing about my job.

Jamilla: 21:06

Amazing. Have you felt the difference working for a start-up as opposed to maybe working for a bigger organization? Do you have any tips, like for work? If someone's listening who's going to work at a start-up.

Aron: 21:17

The main difference is the agility, the nimbleness that a small company can have. You can get into a lot of different things, learn a lot of different things. At a small company there's more opportunity and those types of things. That comes with trade offs of big established companies have processes and it's very easy to follow and you just check off things down your list. So it's kind of a matter of preference. Do you like to just fall into line and you know exactly what you need to do or you want to figure out how to get things done and learn more positions and be kind of pulled all over? There's definitely pros and cons of both.

Jamal: 21:53

Yeah, I absolutely echo what Aron has said and I would encourage everybody who's thinking of shifting their roles or thinking of transitioning into data privacy go and find a start up and work with them because you will learn so much more working with a start up. You'll have so much more exposure and you will get to get stuff done so much quicker rather than sometimes when you're bogged down with processes and formalities and sign offs with some of the larger companies. But the best thing about it is you can actually see how you're making a massive impact and a difference. Whereas in a larger company where you're not seeing the end to end necessarily all the time. You might be getting a bit frustrating because you're doing all of this stuff. You're working for your 40 hours a week or whatever it is. But you're never really seeing the end result unless you're seeing some reports somewhere. With star tup companies you get to see it from the beginning, you get to design solution, implement it and you get to take people through the process and see how the solution is working for the company and the business and individuals right at the end and you get a lot more joy out of it. And then when you take that experience and then you go and you work for a large company more established, you can actually bring a lot more value to the table, you can bring a lot more efficiencies. And I would really encourage everyone who is thinking about putting themselves in the market, not just to stick to the bigger companies, but actually start thinking about how you can go and add value to those start ups because that is really going to help you to grow. And when I work with start ups, that really tested me and it was a thing where I was constantly out of my comfort zone, which helped me to grow and get all of the experience that I managed to get. And I'm very grateful for the start ups I've had the opportunity to work with and I'm also grateful for the start ups that we have as clients as well. Actually. It's really amazing and some of these challenges are very unique and Aron can tell you engineering solutions for some of the challenges that we're seeing in this day and age. When you get to the end, it's actually really rewarding.

Aron: 23:43

I agree with everything that you said. It's a great way to really expand your knowledge base and propels your career, I think.

Jamilla: 23:50

What a lovely note to finish on. Thank you so much, Aron, for joining us. One question, actually, Jamilla, I have a question.

Jamal: 23:59

When you're looking to hire people into your data privacy team, or when you're vetting or interviewing for data privacy professionals, what are the top things you're looking for?

Aron: 24:09

Yeah, the top things we're looking for, well, we usually hire for a very specific objective that we're trying to complete. So in that case, it would be looking for a little background on the specific language that we need that we're missing on the team, the hole that we need to fill. Also training things, projects. I think that what's really beneficial is projects outside of work. What have you done in your free time? You may be made an iPhone or an Android game or something that shows that, hey, you can solve an entire problem from beginning to end and see it through. I think that's very important. And then some background, but obviously we can teach a lot of skills as well.

Jamal: 24:50

I guess what you're saying is you are saying you can teach people skills. People can learn the skills. What you're looking for is that thing that makes the individual, that they have a spark, and they have a natural, actual passion for this. It's not just them saying to you in an interview, I'm very passionate about data privacy, but it's actually being able to demonstrate, prove it from something that they've done, taking initiative for in their own life and showing you outside of work that they are actually passionate about it. They've been able to do something and showing that quality as a person that they bring to the team.

Aron: 25:20

Yes, that's exactly right.

Jamal: 25:22

All right, fantastic. That's one of the things we teach as part of the accelerator program, is those key skills that employers are looking for. And there are three things we've identified most employers want. Number one is they need somebody that's going to actually fit the team. They need someone that's cultural fit. Number two, they need someone that's actually motivated to do that specific role for that company. So it means that you should do your research. You should understand what the challenges of the company are. Have a look at what the culture of the company is like and show them that you're actually here to fit in and solve those problems, and you're motivated to work for that company in that specific role. And the final thing that we've identified most companies want is somebody who has that competence, right? To demonstrate they have the competence, the ability to do that. So when you talk about background that's looking for evidence that they can actually solve these. Problems. They know how to do this. And one of the things that we do at the Academy to help people is we take them through the IAPP International Association of Privacy Professionals training. So right now, we're offering the Certified Information Privacy Professionals of Europe, Certified Information Privacy Manager, and the Certified Information Privacy Technologist, which might resonate with you more than the other two. And we take people through our mentoring program where we really break it all down and make it easy for them, and we build it all back up so they leave the Academy transformed into a confident, ambitious privacy professional who is ready to go and add value to any organization they come across.

Aron: 26:46

That's awesome. I think that's a great way to handle it and building it up piece by piece, as you mentioned, somebody who had that certification went out of their way to achieve that and go through your program, that would speak volumes on a resume. They might not have had any privacy experience before, but that would give them, they could hit the ground running when they got to the role. And what you said about culture is also really great. And one additional point I had there is I think a lot of people are nervous during interviews, which we all are, but it's important to understand that culture, as you said, and interview your interviewer as much as they interview you, to understand, hey, will I fit here or am I going to be miserable because I don't mesh with their personalities and that type of thing? Yeah.

Jamal: 27:30

And that's really important. It can be very difficult for somebody who's just taken up the role, accepting the offer, not really understood the culture of the company, and they find themselves stuck in a role they don't want to leave because they haven't given it's going to look bad on their CV, but it's actually making them miserable. It's not good for their mental health. It's not good for them. It's not good for the company. Right. It's not a good fit. So we want to avoid that. We want to make sure there's a win win situation all the time.

Aron: 27:53

Definitely. That's definitely right.

Jamal: 27:55

Awesome. Jamilla, I'm not going to let you wrap up.

Jamilla: 27:56

Some great tips there and some great wisdom from you during this podcast. Aron, thank you so much for joining us. We really enjoyed having you on the podcast.

Aron: 28:07

I really enjoyed being here. Thanks for having me. And it's great to learn more about you guys as well. So it's been awesome. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity.

Outro: 28:16

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Outro: 28:29

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Until next time, peace be with you. Bye.