Directors beware - privacy reforms introduced

Data breaches in the private and Government sectors are presently the subject of a great deal of media attention. It is timely, therefore, that the Government is planning to ramp up its amendments to the Commonwealth Privacy legislation.

At the end of May 2013, the Privacy Amendment (Privacy Alerts) Bill 2013 was introduced to Parliament. The Bill, if passed, will take effect from March 2014 and will impose a notification obligation on companies where there is a serious data breach. A serious data breach could arise, for example, where there is theft of storage devices, laptops or paper records, the hacking of personal information databases or the incorrect disposal of personal information in a non-secure waste collection process.