BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Indiana University has hired Peter E. Sand as its first chief privacy officer with universitywide responsibilities to ensure and protect the privacy of all IU students, faculty, staff and visitors across all campuses.
These responsibilities include IU’s compliance with the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA. He is also responsible for handling and protecting institutional and personal data in accordance with state and federal laws and industry best practices.
Sand brings 25 years of experience in law, technology, privacy and policy to IU. Most recently he was senior manager of privacy and customer trust at Amazon Lab126 in Sunnyvale, California, where he worked on the complex privacy issues related to Amazon’s customer-facing devices and its Alexa digital assistant. He spent 17 years working in technology and privacy-related positions in state and federal government and also served as executive director of privacy for MGM Resorts International.
The new chief privacy officer position is a joint role between the IU Office of General Counsel, Office of the Executive Vice President for University Clinical Affairs, Office of the Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, and Office of the Vice President for Research.
“Privacy continues to grow as a critical topic for both legal compliance and as a complex area of university policy,” said Fred Cate, the C. Ben Dutton Professor of Law and IU vice president for research. “Peter’s appointment to the new CPO role demonstrates IU’s commitment to lead in the operational, legal compliance and innovative practices in the essential domain of privacy as they evolve in a highly connected world.”
“We are pleased to welcome Pete to Indiana University,” Simmons said. “His broad expertise in privacy law and policy across industries ensures that IU can build and maintain privacy and trust with students, faculty, staff and alumni who depend on the institution to protect their data.”
Sand said he relishes the energy, intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm of higher education and is excited to join IU. He will maintain offices on the Indianapolis and Bloomington campuses.
“IU is a high-tech university,” he said. “On the privacy side, we want to maintain that trusted relationship with the public and each of IU’s different populations.”
His role will be to help IU maintain trust with all of its constituencies, including patients of the IU School of Medicine clinics, students, faculty, staff, alumni and other groups.
Sand’s goal is to make sure that privacy is an organic part of the IU culture and that employees at all levels ask themselves as they develop new policies, procedures and programs: Why do we need that information? What are we going to do with it? What are we going to do when we are done?
Sand earned his law degree and his undergraduate degree in the Honors Program and English from Villanova University. He has taken additional graduate coursework from the National Intelligence University and Naval Postgraduate School.
He officially assumed the chief privacy officer role on Dec. 6.
