The Emerging CPO -- Chief Privacy Officer.

Responding to the public outcry over online privacy concerns, a growing number of companies in the online sector -- roughly 100 to date -- have named corporate privacy officers (CPOs) to board-level positions, according to the META Group, an information technology research and information provider.

In December, IBM became the largest company to create the position, naming Harriet P. Pearson as CPO to articulate software privacy policy for IBM and its customers. Pearson is also expected to develop policy and work with software/technology groups to ensure that all parties adhere to IBM's privacy standards. Congress is even said to be considering the creation of a "privacy czar" for the U.S. government.

"The rise of CPOs shows how companies have steadily evolved and matured their business planning around the privacy challenge," says Mike Gotta, a group analyst with META. He adds, "Privacy is more than technology standards and posting of privacy policies on Web sites, CPOs unify privacy practices and investments across the organization, ensuring that privacy compliance with applicable laws and regulatory statutes becomes ingrained within everyday business operations."

Gotta says that publicizing the position demonstrates senior management's commitment to consumers, employees and stockholders. But to be successful, he adds, a GPO program requires management structures, resource allocation and funding similar to those required by other major projects, such as earlier Y2K and customer relationship management (CRM) efforts.

"The online privacy issue will grow over time as the courts consider it in the context of dot-com acquisitions and liquidations, [and] some Web sites have promised that they will not share their customer lists, even though it's common outside of the Internet to buy access to other companies' customer lists," says Val Sribar, a META group analyst.

While offline profiling has existed for years, certain distinct characteristics of online profiling justify consumer concern, Gotta says. These include: the velocity at which behavioral information can be aggregated, the scale on which it can be shared, the increase in scope to include interactions, tracking across businesses, the stealth under which data is obtained, perceived threats via linkages between anonymous and personally identifiable information and an absence of recourse to resolve privacy conflicts.

In the meantime, Gotta advises end-users to "view privacy promises with skepticism and assume that information provided on the Web is likely to be transferred to other parties through various loopholes and interpretations."