On Monday, November 25, I had the pleasure of attending the iappANZ “Privacy Unbound” Summit in Sydney, Australia. Bringing together members of the privacy community from throughout Australia and New Zealand, the event ran as a series of keynote speeches and on-stage discussions from thought leaders in the field with networking activities in between.
The event kicked off with a round of “speed dating,” and, no…this was not what you are thinking. It allowed all attendees to participate in business networking at a rapid pace. I acknowledged a lot of unfamiliar faces, and a few familiar ones that I had met previously at the iappANZ Privacy Awareness Week event. It was clear that this a different audience than I usually encounter at SharePoint-focused events. Overall, there was a nice mix of legal and compliance professionals, which became evident through the speed dating event and casual conversations throughout the day.
The content throughout the event was excellent. First, we heard from Carolyn Lidgerwood, who heads up Rio Tinto’s Global Privacy Counsel, about how collaborating and coordinating their global privacy landscape presents challenges on both the business and technology levels. She outlined how adopting privacy models and technology greatly assisted in meeting these challenging requirements. This was followed by similar tales from the following presenters:
· Dr. Anthony Bendall, Deputy Victorian Privacy Commissioner
· Dr. Elizabeth Coombs, New South Wales Privacy Commissioner, Information and Privacy Commission
· Joel Camissar, Practice Head, Data Protection, McAfee, Asia Pacific
· John Pane, Regional Lead for Privacy & Data Protection , Johnson & Johnson
· Huey Tan, Data Privacy and Compliance Lead, Accenture Singapore
· Lemm Ex, Privacy Officer, Office of Information Commissioner for Queensland
· Rob Sherman, Manager, Privacy and Public Policy, Facebook
Rob Sherman provided some useful insight as to how Facebook takes privacy matters very seriously. He explained how the website’s end users are empowered with the mechanisms to control their own levels of privacy by allowing subjective posting of content to groups or individuals.
In my opinion, though, the most noteworthy piece of information shared at the event was the following statement from the presentation by Dr. Anthony Bendall on the real-world implications of the Privacy Amendment Act going into effect in March of 2014:
"The Privacy Amendment Act requires that organisations conducting operations in Australia and collecting personal information have a clearly expressed and up-to-date privacy policy. Until recently, having a privacy policy had been voluntary, albeit advisable, course of action for Australian businesses.
Important areas of reform impose full liability directly on Australian businesses for breach of Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) by their offshore data storage contractors; and allow for civil penalty orders of up to AU $370,000 for individuals and up to AU $1.7 million for companies."
This statement was followed on by some key considerations around why privacy matters, what the Australian Privacy Act is about, how do these changes affect Australian organisations, and when you need to comply. He also explained the importance of organizations having a roadmap to achieve and remain within compliance of the act. To learn how AvePoint Compliance Guardian can play an important role in your organization’s compliance roadmap by helping you mitigate risks of privacy, security, site quality, and accessibility policy violations, be sure to visit our website.
The keynote from former United Kingdom Information Commissioner Richard Thomas entitled “Raising the Profile of Privacy – How Data Protection Got Sexy (well almost…)” was also very insightful as it outlined the history around privacy. Thomas went into detail on how data privacy has become more prevalent in recent years due to technology adoption and social media. He explained how this insurgence of public data and ease of access to this data has spurred new concerns in today’s digital age.
Overall, iappANZ provided another great opportunity for privacy professionals to come together, network, and learn from renowned experts in the field. We hope to see you at future iappANZ events! To learn about where we’ll be next in Australia and New Zealand, be sure to visit our website.
