Catagory:Privacy, Data Protection & Information Management

1
Is Uber’s Greyball pushing the boundaries of what is legally and ethically OK?
2
Australia’s new data breach notification laws: what they mean for you
3
Australian data breach notification law passes both houses of Parliament
4
Update: Mandatory Data Breach Notification Laws closer to being introduced
5
India’s top court asks WhatsApp, Facebook to please explain over privacy policy
6
SAP criticises impending EU data protection laws
7
Cyber-attacks: a problem in 2016, still a problem in 2017
8
UK companies taking on cybersecurity-related insurance in soaring numbers
9
Privacy Commissioner investigates alleged sale of telco customer information
10
Boards Push Insurers to Quantify Cyber Risks

Is Uber’s Greyball pushing the boundaries of what is legally and ethically OK?

By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace

Ridesharing service Uber has been using a self-developed program called Greyball in a bid to avoid regulatory scrutiny and other law enforcement activity.

As reported in The New York Times, the program uses various techniques to survey government officials when rolling out the service in new cities. This came after Uber’s services encountered legal issues (including cars being impounded and drivers fined) as it tried to operate in new locations, including in Melbourne, Australia. Read More

Australia’s new data breach notification laws: what they mean for you

By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Allison Wallace

Further to our blog post yesterday, we’ve prepared a summary into the implications of the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Bill 2017 that has now been passed by both houses of Parliament. Read our article here.

Australian data breach notification law passes both houses of Parliament

By Cameron Abbott and Rob Pulham

For those who have been following the progress of the Australian data breach notification laws, as of yesterday (13 February 2017) the bill has been passed by both houses of Parliament and now awaits royal assent.

Update: Mandatory Data Breach Notification Laws closer to being introduced

By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace

As foreshadowed by the Attorney General’s Department last year, the Australian government is pushing ahead with its plan to introduce mandatory data breach notification laws, with Parliament today agreeing to a third reading of the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Bill 2016. You can find more about the proposed legislation here. We’ll keep you updated as the bill makes its way through parliament.

India’s top court asks WhatsApp, Facebook to please explain over privacy policy

By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace

A petition to challenge messenger service WhatsApp’s privacy policy in India is gaining momentum, with the Supreme Court this week issuing notices to WhatsApp, its owner Facebook, and the telecom regulator TRAI to respond to the court within two weeks.

The petitioners are incensed over WhatsApp’s changes to its privacy policy in September last year, which saw it begin sharing users information with Facebook, including their phone numbers. Those who didn’t agree with the new policy were given the option to “opt out” by deleting the app. This announcement came two years after WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook. Read More

SAP criticises impending EU data protection laws

By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace

SAP has expressed concerns over the implications of the landmark EU data privacy regulations, saying the penalties that will be imposed are too high, and could impede the development of Europe’s start-up culture.

The data privacy regulation will be implemented in May 2018, and includes fines for EU companies up to 4 per cent of their global revenues if they commit a significant breach of data privacy.

In an interview with the Financial Times, SAP’s head of products and innovation, Bernd Leukert said he believes the penalties are too high, and put companies at risk of losing their entire revenue if they commit multiple breaches.

Mr Leukert said he also fears that the EU regulations were not properly aligned with laws in other jurisdictions, such as the US.

Cyber-attacks: a problem in 2016, still a problem in 2017

By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace

A survey of nearly 600 organisations across a variety of industries globally has revealed 98% of these organisations experienced some form of cyber-attack in 2016. (We are left wondering if the other 2% just didn’t notice?)

The survey, conducted by cyber-security company Radware, also found that many organisations are still not prepared to face the threat landscape including that 40% of organisations do not have an incident response plan in place.

Respondents indicated that ransom was the top motivation behind cyber-attacks (41%), followed by insider threats (27%), political hacktivism (26%) and competition (26%).

Radware’s Vice President of Security Solutions, Carl Herberger, says that money is the top motivator in today’s threat landscape. He says “attackers employ an ever-increasing number of tactics to steal valuable information, from ransom attacks that can lock up a company’s data, to DDoS attacks that act as a smoke screen for information theft, to direct brute force or injection attacks that grant direct access to internal data”.

Radware predicts that in 2017, we will see an increase in the use of IoT botnets, cyber ransom, telephony DoS, permanent denial of service for data centre and IoT operations, and public transport being held hostage.

Not the most positive outlook for 2017, but it would be a brave person to suggest they are wrong with those predictions.

UK companies taking on cybersecurity-related insurance in soaring numbers

By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace

There was a 50% growth in the adoption of cybersecurity-related insurance in the UK between 2015 and 2016.

CFC Underwriting discovered the trend after polling industry representatives at the 2016 Cyber Symposium late last year.

The underwriter, which provides cyber insurance to more than 20000 clients globally, found the factors driving clients to purchase these kinds of policies included the “fear factor” of a cyber attack (23%) and the impending introduction of the European General Data Protection Regulation in 2018 (26%).

More than half of the respondents to the poll (53%) indicated they believed electronic computer crime will lead to an increase in insurance claims. Earlier figures released by CFC Underwriting revealed it handled over 400 claims on cyber policies in 2016, a 78% increase on 2015.

Privacy Commissioner investigates alleged sale of telco customer information

By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace

Australia’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim is making enquiries into allegations that the personal information of customers of three Australian telcos is being sold online.

Fairfax uncovered an alleged rort involving ‘corrupt insiders’ at the offshore call centres of Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, which has allegedly seen details including customers’ addresses, dates of birth and billing statements leaked to at least one private company in India, which is then allegedly selling the information for up to $1000.

Commissioner Pilgrim has said in a statement that he is working to determine what further action may need to be taken.

All three telcos have also released statements, reiterating that they take the privacy of their customers seriously. Vodafone and Optus have met with the AFP, which has now passed the matter on to Indian authorities.

Boards Push Insurers to Quantify Cyber Risks

By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Murray

US risk management firm Advisen recently held the Cyber Risk Insights Conference where insurers, brokers, corporate risk managers and CSOs came together to discuss the importance of company CFOs quantifying cybersecurity risks. Panelists included the risk managers of Merck and Time, who both classified cybersecurity risk exposure as a top danger faced by corporations. Time’s risk management department, for example, is working to quantify the company’s exposure to cyber attacks so that it can transfer some of the risks to insurers. However, Time’s director of risk management says culling all cyber-risk-management information together in a meaningfully predictive way is a challenging task.

Furthermore, gaining assistance from insurers about how to quantitatively define cybersecurity risk is also problematic as the insurance industry is only getting started on truly understanding how to forecast cyber losses. Cyber security practice leader for insurance broker Lockton Cos, Ben Beeson has revealed that insurers have only really become aware of the vast extent of loss that can eventuate when handling personal data this year. Keeping up with incredibly evolving and dynamic cybersecurity threats is sure to be an immense challenge for insurers. Read more here.

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