chief privacy officer (CPO)

The Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) is a senior position within a company responsible for data privacy compliance and other relevant consumer data. In the late 1990s, companies began to address the increasing relevance of, and concern for, consumer privacy by installing the Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) at the senior management level. IBM was the first Fortune 500 company in the US to appoint a Chief Privacy Officer, Harriet Pearson, on November 29, 2000. Since then, many large companies, especially those with a large e-commerce business, have had a CPO on their executive cadre.