As privacy concerns continue to be debated globally, IBM (News - Alert) has appointed a new chief privacy officer – Christina Peters.

Peters will oversee IBM's global information policy and practices group. She will lead lawyers, data protection and technical pros at IBM.

The issues she will handle relate to data security, privacy and related concerns.

IBM prides itself on its privacy initiatives, and was the first to adopt a global privacy code of conduct, the company said in a recent statement. It also only advertises on websites with visible privacy statements, the company added.

Peters worked as an attorney with IBM since 1996, first in Germany, later in the United States. She has worked on cases on policy, compliance, litigation, transactions and cyber-security.

A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, she formerly worked at Washington, D.C’s Covington & Burling law firm. She also worked at the Federal Cartel Authority in Germany and Deutsche Telekom (News - Alert) as well.

Peters first was named to IBM’s privacy team in 2010 under then chief privacy officer Harriet Pearson, according to Corporate Counsel magazine. Pearson recently left to take a job at Hogan Lovells.

The privacy office at IBM has top focuses of big data and analytics – much like the company as a whole.

“For us, privacy is a cornerstone of trust,” Peters said in a statement quoted by Corporate Counsel. “It’s about not only compliance with the law, but also the kind of trust that you need in order to build a relationship with an individual, whether it’s your employee or whether it’s your customer.”

“We are in a position to do what we call ‘privacy enablement’ – helping people use data in the ways that we need to use it in order to run the organization and get insight from that data, but with the confidence that we are complying with IBM policy,” Peters added.

Currently, many government regulators globally are focused on privacy issues – such as those related to Google (News - Alert) and other companies, TMCnet reported.