Privacy lawsuit claims to cross $8 billion by 2025: Report

Privacy lawsuits and claims related to biometric information processing and cyber-physical systems will generate over $8 billion in fines and settlements by 2025, Gartner said in its latest report. 

The report also predicts that by 2024, large organisations’ average annual budget for privacy will exceed $2.5 million, allowing a shift from compliance ethics to competitive differentiation. Privacy budgets increased from $1.7 million in 2019 to $2 million in 2021 and are expected to continue to increase at a steady rate.  

Gartner maintained that with the expansion of privacy regulation efforts across dozens of jurisdictions in the coming two years, many organisations will only see the need to start their privacy program efforts now.  

“Autonomous vehicles, drones that capture video, smart buildings and smart cities are cyber-physical systems that capture biometrics of all kind. The collection and storage of biometric information is gaining, whether in the form of fingerprints, iris scans, remote recognition of face, gait, voice, or even DNA samples. But this information has huge potential to be misused or abused,” said Bart Willemsen, research vice president at Gartner.   

Willemsen was also of the view that the new privacy laws cover the capture, conversion, storage and processing of biometric data, and can even apply to face tagging technology in social media. In his view, they may also come with a retention regime, and may prohibit selling, leasing, trading or profiting from biometric data. Some prohibit the usage of biometric information in certain use cases altogether.