Commemorative days can be fun. National Pickle Day (November 14) celebrates briny snacks. International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19) gives you permission to say “ahoy” at work (not that you need it), and National Pizza Day (February 9)? It should basically be every day, right?
These days can be a bit goofy, but they’re low stakes. If you participate, great. If you forget they exist, no one notices.
But some observances lead to real action. Small Business Saturday generates billions of dollars in local business revenue. Earth Day inspired landmark legislation like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.
Data Privacy Day (January 28) falls in this second category. It doesn’t get Earth Day’s press coverage or Small Business Saturday’s consumer enthusiasm (yet!), but it offers a valuable checkpoint to measure how your privacy program is working. Many companies don’t take full advantage of the opportunity, though. They schedule a training reminder, post on LinkedIn, maybe update the employee handbook.
In 2025, with ten state regulators coordinating enforcement and privacy penalties reaching seven figures, Data Privacy Day is your opportunity to answer a different question: Can you prove your privacy program is functioning?
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Why this Data Privacy Day is different
In April 2025, a group of state regulators formed the Consortium of Privacy Regulators to coordinate investigations and share resources. By October, that group had expanded to ten states.
Michael Macko, head of enforcement at California’s Privacy Protection Agency (CalPrivacy), described what’s happening: “We’re entering a new era of enforcement as state privacy laws continue to harmonize and expand.”
At the same time, CalPrivacy issued its largest fines to date. Some examples include:
- Tractor Supply was fined $1.35 million for failures including inadequate vendor contracts and misconfigured opt-out systems.
- Honda paid $632,500 for requiring excessive verification before honoring privacy requests and maintaining contracts that lacked required privacy provisions.
- Todd Snyder paid $345,178 for similar opt-out mechanism failures.
On the other side of the country, Connecticut levied its first penalty under its privacy law: $85,000 against TicketNetwork for an unreadable privacy notice and broken rights request mechanisms.
Enforcement is happening in real time and businesses can’t afford to view privacy as a theoretical exercise disconnected from their daily activities.
Now, we’re not saying to skip your training sessions or any of your other scheduled Data Privacy Day activities. But it’s just as important that you evaluate whether your privacy program is working.
Five privacy program metrics to track for Data Privacy Day
According to TrustArc’s 2025 Global Privacy Benchmarks Report, 82% of medium and large companies actively measure privacy programs. But which metrics reveal a healthy privacy program? These five areas can offer evidence that your privacy program operates effectively and help you spot issues before they become compliance problems.
Metric #1: Privacy rights response times
Your average response time—from request receipt to fulfillment—tells you whether your data inventory and workflows are in good shape.
Legal requirements for privacy rights request responses times vary; for example, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) allows one month, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and most other states allows 45 days, while Iowa doubles that with its 90-day timeline.
Unfortunately, a long timeline doesn’t do you much good if you can’t find the data in question. The pressure is on the rise, too. According to DataGrail’s 2024 Data Privacy Trends Report:
- Privacy rights requests increased 246% from 2021 to 2023
- Businesses faced an average of 859 requests per million identities in 2023
- Deletion requests account for more than 40% of all rights requests
With that kind of volume, it’s not surprising that teams might scramble to locate personal information. If you’re consistently approaching (or passing) statutory deadlines, it’s time to assess your processes.
Metric #2: Cookie consent and opt-out performance
Consent rates can vary by region and banner design.
- In the United States, users’ acceptance of optional cookies exceed 80% in opt-out jurisdictions
- In Europe, where opt-in consent is required, compliant banners with visible “Reject All” buttons see acceptance rates between 72.5% and 82%
- Germany and France show the lowest acceptance rates, with fewer than 25% of users accepting cookies
Why pay attention to cookie acceptance rates, though? Your acceptance rate combined with user complaints about cookie management can reveal banner design problems.
If users report difficulty finding reject options, or if your acceptance rate sits suspiciously high (above 90%), your banner may be nudging users toward acceptance (a dark pattern) rather than providing genuine choice.
Metric #3: Vendor risk management and contract compliance
Three significant enforcement actions from CalPrivacy cited inadequate vendor agreements; Tractor Supply, Honda, and Todd Snyder each faced penalties for service provider contracts that lacked required privacy provisions.
This is a pervasive issue for businesses. IAPP’s Privacy Risk Study 2023 found that noncompliant third-party data processing ranked as the second-highest priority privacy risk domain for organizations. Third-party breaches remain one of the most common attack vectors.
To get a better understanding of your vendor management activities, consider the following questions:
- Can you identify vendors that are processing sensitive personal information versus general contact information?
- Do your contracts specify what happens if a vendor experiences a breach? Who notifies consumers, who covers costs, what timeline applies?
- When a vendor launches a new feature or changes how they process personal information, does your team know about it before it goes live?
If you can’t answer these questions quickly, your vendor risk management has gaps. Assess all high-risk vendors (those with broad data access) within 90 days, then establish a schedule for periodic reassessment.
Metric #4: Privacy impact assessment tracking
Privacy impact assessments (PIAs) look at the privacy risks related to business activities, like excessive data collection, weak access controls, or insecure transfer methods. When looking at PIAs, several numbers are especially revealing as to whether assessments are actually preventing privacy issues rather than just documenting them. These include:
- How many high-risk projects had PIAs compared to the number that went live?
- How many PIAs findings resulted in modifications to add privacy safeguards?
- Are PIAs identifying risks early enough to influence technical architecture decisions?
- What percentage of identified risks were mitigated before project launch?
An increase in early-stage PIAs shows your privacy team is integrated into project planning rather than brought in at the last minute. However, if you’re consistently conducting PIAs after projects launch, you’re documenting problems rather than preventing them.
Metric #5: Holistic training impact
A 97% training completion rate looks impressive on paper, but it doesn’t tell you much about whether employees understand their privacy responsibilities.
Another way to look at it is this: Privacy training effectiveness requires measuring behavioral change, not just attendance. According to industry research on privacy metrics, effective training creates measurable operational improvements.
Metrics that show the impact of your training might include:
- Reduction in privacy incidents after training
- Decrease in phishing email clicks
- Increase in employees consulting the privacy team before launching new data collection
If your training completion is high but privacy incidents remain constant, your training content or delivery format needs revision.
Turn measurement into strategic value
January 28 is your opportunity to establish evidence that your privacy program functions. These five metrics—rights response times, cookie consent performance, vendor contract compliance, PIA completion rates, and training effectiveness—can provide baseline measurements that demonstrate program value to leadership and identify gaps before they become enforcement actions.
Ready to establish your privacy program baseline and build a sustainable measurement framework? Schedule a call with Red Clover Advisors to assess your current performance and develop metrics that matter for your business.
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