Three Top Privacy Innovators Recognized by the International Association of Privacy Professionals for Privacy and Data Protection Programs

DALLAS, Sept. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Winners of the ninth annual HP-International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Privacy Innovation Awards were recognized today at the IAPP Privacy Dinner, held in conjunction with the IAPP Privacy Academy 2011. The honorees were Warner Bros. Entertainment, Ontario Telemedicine Network and Heartland Payment Systems.

The annual awards recognize unique privacy and data protection programs and services that build trust and add value to the private and public sectors. Entries are judged from a broad field of entries and selected by a panel of private- and public-sector privacy experts.

"This year's HP-IAPP Privacy Innovation Award winners showcase creative and comprehensive approaches to creating more trusted environments for staff, consumers and business," said IAPP President and CEO Trevor Hughes. "We applaud these organizations for their commitment to advancing privacy and security and their willingness to share their ideas."

"HP is pleased to sponsor this award that recognizes advancements in privacy worldwide," said Hewlett Packard's Vice President and Chief Privacy Officer, Scott Taylor. "These initiatives and technologies are great examples of how privacy can be beneficial to organizations."

In the large organization category (more than 5,000 employees), Warner Bros. Entertainment won for its multimedia privacy and information security employee education campaign. The "Put Yourself in the Picture Awareness Campaign" highlights a pair of would-be filmmakers starring in three internal videos that illustrate privacy, security and social media risks and employees' responsibilities for protecting data and proprietary information. The humorous short-form videos compliment a new privacy and information security intranet hub with company policies, privacy guidance and other resources. Using the characters from the webisodes, the creators employed innovative marketing techniques—including movie posters, a privacy-themed food menu and promotional items in unexpected places—to reinforce messages. The campaign was extremely well received and so successful in raising awareness and drawing positive attention to data protection that there are plans to expand it beyond the initial launch in the U.S. and UK to reach the company's other international locations. It is also helping to spawn similar campaigns at other large companies.

The winner in the small organization category (fewer than 5,000 employees), is the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN) for its comprehensive efforts to reduce privacy incidents. OTN is an independent, not-for-profit organization funded by the Province to improve access to healthcare through use of videoconferencing, webstreaming and other technologies. The organization found that the main cause for the potential exposure of patient information was due to human error when using interactive services. To address these critical privacy risks, OTN included privacy in the organization's strategic plan and built a two-year strategy to improve data protection. As part of the plan, the organization implemented automatic bridge programming, a best-practice toolkit for employees and Members, and Fax Over Internet Protocol (FOIP). By automating tasks to reduce human error, these programs were able to significantly reduce the number of privacy incidents.

Heartland Payment Systems received the honor in the technology category for E3™, its end-to-end encryption solution for preventing credit/debit card fraud by protecting cardholder information throughout the entire transaction. Heartland is the fifth largest payments processor in the United States, supporting 5.5 billion transactions per year. E3 protects sensitive payment card data from the time a card is swiped at a point-of-sale system and through Heartland's processing network with layers of physical and logical security, including tamper-resistant hardware and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). By encrypting data from a card's magnetic stripe the moment it is converted from analog to digital data, the information enters a merchant's system encrypted, protecting the merchant environment from the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive data and consumers from the dangers of credit/debit card fraud. Subsystems only have the data they need to route transactions and do not have access to additional data that could be maliciously used. The technology protects the payments ecosystem and has helped further Heartland's positive reputation around payment card security and merchant advocacy.

About the IAPP

The International Association of Privacy Professionals is the world's largest association of privacy professionals with more than 8,800 members across 70 countries. The IAPP helps to define, support and improve the privacy profession globally through networking, education and certification. More information about the IAPP is available at www.privacyassociation.org.

SOURCE International Association of Privacy Professionals