One of the most powerful influences on compliance with any form of rules or laws is our behaviour, and one of the most powerful influences on our behaviour is our culture; our values, norms, ideas, customs and social environment.

It therefore follows that if we look at compliance with data protection law, we need also to look at the culture surrounding our individual and collective behaviours and attitudes.

It is common to hear it said that we need to build a data protection culture and I wholeheartedly agree, but talking about culture change is easy, delivering it is not.

We are all increasingly affected by data so its protection should be of interest to us all. The data and privacy professionals who individually and collectively do some extraordinary work are, however, still a relatively small community. When we get together at conferences and other events, there is a wonderful buzz of energy and passion for the subject which I have always found infectious. Be in no doubt that people who ‘do’ data protection for a living do it because we care.