With data the new currency, economic growth will become directly linked to the protection of data, Cisco chief privacy officer Michelle Dennedy has told ZDNet.
Speaking during Cisco Live 2018 in Orlando, Dennedy said the greatest issue affecting privacy besides GDPR[1] is polarisation.
"It really worries me that we have the instability of our global economic landscape; oftentimes, when you have economic upheaval, people think they can start skimping on things like security and privacy. I don't think that that is possible anymore," she told ZDNet.
"I think gross domestic product or GDP is going to be tightly linked to things like GDPR, because the integrity of your networks will be the integrity of your data."
According to Dennedy, GDP will be increasingly dependent on data. Comparing it to currency, she said the protection of privacy is likewise cultural.
"I think data is very similar in that way, in that the way we want to tell our stories, the way we collectively have agreed to be policed or be interactive with our governments and with our businesses and with each other, and even cross-generation, is going to change going forward, and so that's why I think it is so bound up with GDP," she explained.
Read also: Cisco Live 2018: CEO Chuck Robbins pushes tighter datacentre security[2]
Dennedy said "every single one" of Cisco's customers has been asking about how to deal with GDPR and ensure they remain in line with the regulations, with the first step to figure out where their data is and how they're going to do that.
"We provide sort of a buddy system, if you will, so I'll talk peer to peer with my peers at a lot of our customers, and