The Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) is a senior level executive within a growing number of global corporations, public agencies and other organizations, responsible for managing risks related to information privacy laws and regulations.[1] Variations on the role often carry titles such as "Privacy Officer," "Privacy Leader," and "Privacy Counsel."[2] However, the role of CPO differs significantly from another similarly-titled role, the Data Protection Officer (DPO), a role mandated for some organizations under the GDPR, and the two roles should not be confused or conflated.[3][4]
The CPO role was a response to increasing "(c)onsumer concerns over the use of personal information, including medical data and financial information along with laws and regulations."[5] In particular, the expansion of Information Privacy Laws and new regulations governing the collection and use of personal information, such as the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), has raised the profile and increased the frequency of having a senior executive as the leader of privacy-related compliance efforts.[6] In addition, some laws and regulations (such as the HIPAA Security Rule) require that certain organizations within their regulatory scope must designate a privacy compliance leader.[7][8]