There were 964 data breaches reported to the federal regulator in the first year of mandatory reporting rules and “malicious or criminal attacks” were behind 60% of cases, with most of the remainder caused by human error and only 5% blamed on malfunctions. Read More
Privacy commissioners of four states and the Commonwealth are celebrating their week on the awareness-raising calendar, at the pointy end of an election campaign that… Read More
The experienced jurist responds to the former APS commissioner's claims that he exceeded his brief and that he should have been excluded due to apprehended bias -- a concept McMillan understands quite well -- and notes that he mostly found in Lloyd's favour, dismissing all but one of nine allegations. Read More
The former Australian public service commissioner has accused the merit protection commissioner's office of smearing his reputation. Read More
The Australian Information Commissioner gave a keynote address to federal FOI officers at a meeting of the Information Contact Officers Network (ICON) this week. Read More
A new report confirms that Australia’s healthcare sector is susceptible to data breaches, yet the legal requirements around breach notification are inconsistent and about to get more confusing. Read More
The number of data breach notifications has increased steadily with each month since Australia's new mandatory disclosure laws came into effect earlier this year, according to the latest summary from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. Read More
Just after one corruption watchdog warned public servants not to peek at government records without good reason in its contribution to Privacy Awareness Week, another laid charges against a former police officer for doing just that. Read More
In just six weeks there were 63 data breach notifications to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner since the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme came into force in February this year. Read More
The Department of Health breached the Privacy Act by publishing open data, according to a ruling made last week by former information and privacy commissioner Timothy Pilgrim, a day before his retirement. Read More
Brian Fletcher, director of government affairs for Symantec in the Asia-Pacific region, offers five tips to tighten privacy controls in the public sector as a form of preemptive damage control, as mandatory data breach reporting comes into play. Read More
Timothy Pilgrim has announced his resignation as privacy and freedom-of-information commissioner, effective March 24, two days out from the beginning of the mandatory data breach notification scheme. Read More
A lost device or information sent to the wrong person could trigger new obligations under the Notifiable Data Breach scheme which comes into effect next year. New resources are available to prepare. Read More
A new data de-identification decision-making guide has been released to help public servants and others navigate this area. But there is still more work to be done on engagement, says Peter Leonard, a leading expert on the legal side of data use and privacy. Read More
A new internal report confirms about half of federal FOI decisions don't stand up to scrutiny. Agencies are going through the motions but haven't developed the pro-disclosure mindset that was one of the key intentions of the FOI Act. Read More
