DPC Publishes Guidance On Anonymisation And Pseudonymisation

As business and society become ever more data-rich, data minimisation techniques equally become increasingly important. In August 2016, the Data Protection Commissioner ("DPC") published guidance on the use of data anonymisation and pseudonymisation. This follows similar guidance published by EU regulators in 2014.

The DPC's guidance focuses on the effectiveness of anonymisation techniques and provides recommendations for organisations wishing to use these techniques. Given that the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003 (the "Acts") are silent on this point, each organisation must  ensure that the techniques it uses are sufficiently robust to avoid the identification of individuals.