When Bojana Bellamy first explored the career possibilities open to someone with her legal training, privacy issues looked like a niche – if promising – speciality. Back then, in the mid-1990s, the European Union was examining how to regulate the way companies handled the sensitive information they collected in the course of doing business, amid growing concern from consumers.
Ms Bellamy’s move into the realm of privacy paid off. Information technology’s invasion of almost every area of business has brought with it a burgeoning profession: now thousands of professionals are devoted to helping companies navigate the complex legal waters around handling sensitive data.
Today, Ms Bellamy is director of data privacy at Accenture, the professional services group. She oversees a team of six people, with a further 60 or so embedded within the business to ensure that personal data – whether of employees, customers or its clients’ customers – is handled appropriately.