This is the 20th anniversary of James Surowiecki’s influential book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. He argues that group decisions, often very large groups, are more effective than when done by a single group member.In The Privacy Leader Compass—A Comprehensive Business-Oriented Roadmap for Building and Leading Practical Privacy Programs (CRC Press), authors Dr. Valerie Lyons and Todd Fitzgerald have gathered the wisdom of over 60 experts in the field and produced a helpful guide. Experts in this valuable book include noted industry leaders Rebecca Herold, Larry Deitz, Mark Rasch, and many others.There has never been a more critical time to be a privacy leader as the stakes have never been higher. With hard drive capacitates continuously increasing and getting correspondingly cheaper, it is easy to underappreciate how much data is indeed available. Laptops now come standard with terabyte hard drives. To put that into perspective, the entire Library of Congress contains but 15 terabytes of data. And with 1TB thumb drives costing under $10, you can get the entire Library of Congress in your pocket for under $150.With that, there is a lot of data to protect. Compounded with the relatively low cost of hardware (especially when using the cloud), the importance of data risk management has never been more essential. It has also never been costlier, the proof being the recent news that European Union regulators hit TikTok with a $368 million fine for failing to protect children’s privacy, and Meta fined a record-breaking $1.3 billion by the same regulators for violating EU privacy laws by transferring the personal data of Facebook users to servers in the United States.Anyone who has used Waze or other navigation tools will see they are offered a preferred route and 2-3 alternate routes. Regarding privacy, it’s not always clear what exactly it is and how to implement it. The book shows there is no single way to protect data effectively and details the many ways that firms can do that.The book provides the reader with a broad and deep understanding of topics. From privacy law, strategies, technical implementations, people, and much more, the reader comes out with an in-depth knowledge of the many aspects of this monstrosity called privacy.The difference between a commercial and a movie is that a commercial has to compellingly get its message across in under a minute. Movies have the liberty of time to develop a storyline. The 60-plus chapters in the books are like commercials in that they quickly get to the point and give the reader actionable information they can use.Many of the authors include penetrating questions that a Data Protection Officer (DPO) or Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) will have to ask themselves. They will also need answers to these questions, as roles like DPO, CPO, CISO, and the like have to reassure their boards that corporate data is indeed being protected adequately.For those looking for a solid introduction to data privacy and want to hear the wisdom of the very smart privacy crowds, The Privacy Leader Compass is an important book to have in their library. With privacy regulators out in force, it might also be one of your best investments.