PIA
/ˈpī-ˈā/
n. “Privacy on your terms, not theirs.”
PIA, short for Private Internet Access, is a service designed to provide individuals and organizations with secure, encrypted connections to the internet. Acting primarily as a Virtual Private Network (VPN), PIA ensures that online activities—browsing, streaming, messaging, and file transfers—are protected from eavesdroppers, ISPs, and other potential network adversaries.
CMP
/ˌsi-ɛm-pi/
n. “Consent made visible, managed, and enforceable.”
CMP, short for Consent Management Platform, is a software system that helps websites and applications obtain, store, and manage user consent for data collection, processing, and sharing, often in compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. These platforms are crucial in the modern digital ecosystem, where privacy regulations require explicit and auditable consent from users before personal information can be processed.
CCPA
/ˌsi-si-pi-eɪ/
n. “Your data, your choice, enforced in California.”
GDPR
/ˌdʒi-di-pri/
n. “Your data, your rules, enforced globally.”
GDPR, short for General Data Protection Regulation, is a sweeping data privacy law enacted by the European Union in 2018. Its purpose is to give individuals control over their personal data and to standardize how organizations across the EU—and those interacting with EU citizens—handle that data. GDPR transformed data protection from a local compliance task into a global operational concern, redefining the relationship between organizations and the personal information they process.
Virtual Private Network
/ˌviː-piː-ˈɛn/
n. “Your private highway across the public internet.”
A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is a technology that creates a secure, encrypted tunnel between your device and a remote server, allowing data to travel safely over untrusted networks like the internet. By masking your IP address and encrypting your traffic, VPNs protect your online identity, prevent eavesdropping, and can bypass geographic restrictions on content.