Your Arch-Nemesis is a Data Scientist: What's the Difference Between Security and Privacy Work?
Aleatha Parker-Wood
BSidesSF 2026 · Day 1 · AMC Theatre 03
In a landscape increasingly dominated by data-driven decision-making and machine learning, the distinctions and overlaps between traditional security and privacy work have become critically important, yet often misunderstood. Aleatha Parker-Wood, a seasoned expert with extensive experience spanning both security R&D and privacy engineering, delivered a compelling talk at BSides SF, dissecting these differences from a practitioner's perspective. Her presentation, "Your Arch-Nemesis is a Data Scientist: What's the Difference Between Security and Privacy Work?", illuminated why security-centric approaches frequently fall short in addressing modern privacy challenges and how organizations can bridge this gap.
AI review
Parker-Wood knows her material cold — the security-vs-privacy framing is genuinely useful, and the operational details (consent propagation, child-data contamination, purpose-limited deletion) are more concrete than most talks in this space. But this is a BSides explainer, not a research drop: it's well-executed education for practitioners who haven't thought hard about privacy engineering, not a novel contribution to anyone who has.