This essay will discuss the topic of cyberbullying with respect to the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), a non-profit association founded in 2000 with a mission to define, support and improve the privacy profession globally, as well as the privacy certifications it offers to ensure that data breaches, identity theft and loss of customer trust are well safeguarded against. The essay will first introduce the topic of cyberbullying, and discuss thereafter how IAPP certifications such as the Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP), Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM) and the Certified Information Privacy Technologist (CIPT) can help individuals to better manage threats for cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying refers to the act of exposing a person’s private information or reframing their public portrayal without their expressed consent or control (IAPP, 2018). Cyberbullying is a particularly dangerous form of online victimization and exploitation, given the relative anonymity of the perpetrator and the difficulty in identifying and stopping the perpetrator’s actions. This has been linked with lower self esteem, increased suicide risk and greater anxiety among its victims, and cyberbullying as an issue has therefore been the target of interventions by educational media campaigns, school programs, parental oversight and involvement, Congressional legislation and screening and evidence-based interventions by health care providers (Aboujaoude et al, 2015).
The media has featured a number of alarming cyberbullying cases arising from a lack of control over cybersecurity of key consumer platforms such as social media networks. For example, in 2016, the New York Times published a story on how Kim Kardashian published confidential recordings of conversations between Kanye West and Taylor Swift, and Khloe Kardashian posted photos of a near nude woman and framed actress Chloe Grace Moretz for them (IAPP, 2016). These cyberbullying tactics were the result not only of malicious intent, but also the attempts by high profile celebrities to exploit significant gaps in the cybersecurity defenses of their targeted victims (IAPP, 2016).
IAPP certifications can thus be an important tool in combating the urgent issue of cyberbullying. As discussed by the IAPP’s Introduction to Privacy for Technology Professionals, it is important for cybersecurity professionals to effectively manage threats such as cyberbullies by incorporating privacy into their risk analysis, and ensuring sufficient anonymity, encryption and privacy interfaces for their users in order to safeguard user security and privacy. This would help potential cyberbullying victims fend off the threats associated with data breaches and exposure of their confidential information.
IAPP certifications such as the Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP), Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM) and the Certified Information Privacy Technologist (CIPT) can also help individuals to better manage threats for cyberbullying. For example, a 2019 study by Rosa et al (2019) found that IAPP technologies such as automated cyberbullying detection and threat analysis systems may be effective at combating the vulnerabilities used by cyberbullies to exploit their victims, although this may not apply fully to all real world situations as datasets used to train these detection systems is incomplete (Rosa et al, 2019). Nonetheless, the study demonstrates that IAPP certifications such as the CIPP and CIPM can equip cybersecurity professionals with useful toolkits and skills to build robust information protection and cybersecurity systems that help to ward off cyberbullying. As one potential use case, CIPP and CIPM certifications may be used by cybersecurity professionals to automatically flag and remove cyberbullying content, such as nude pictures or slanderous posts, operated on school networks in public education institutions.
Furthermore, CIPP and CIPM certifications could be used to enhance privacy and data protection of consumer databases used by schools, companies and workplaces, in order to prevent the data in such databases from being exploited by unethical cyberbullies. These practices would also help organisations targeted by cyberbullies from suffering from poor compliance and risk mitigation practices, and would ensure that these organisations are compliant with jurisdictional laws, regulations and enforcement in combating the threats posed by cyberbullies.
Secondly, IAPP certifications can also train CIPP, CIPM and CIPT holders to more effectively identify the sources of cyberbullying. For example, in a study conducted by Lee & Shin (2016), it was found that boys had a high proportion of cyberbullying perpetration that girls, and girls tended to perpetrate cyberbullying through chat services. CIPP, CIPM and CIPT ho
Order this paper