Privacy issues a risk in business: panel

A panel of privacy professionals has urged businesses to practice security measures when sharing information online, including reviewing third-party vendors.

Speaking at a Western Australian Marketing Association event this morning, information and data specialists from three WA companies provided insights into the issue of privacy and security in business.

The U Group & Co head of privacy Peta Demidenko said a recent survey showed 80 per cent of employees would leave their jobs if there was a privacy breach.

A report from International Association of Privacy Professionals found almost 68 per cent on consumers were concerned about their online privacy, Ms Demidenko said.

The panellists referenced high-profile data breaches and hacking incidents in recent years, including the Optus cyberattack in September 2022 and Medibank in October 2022.

In both cases, the companies believed their customers’ information had been stolen and released on the dark web.

VGW data privacy specialist Gillian van Rensburg said businesses should review their third party access to information, as a security practice.

“Data breaches, unfortunately, are very common now, and most of them happen for three reasons,” she said.

“It's cloud misconfigurations, corporate ransomware, and vendor exploitation.

“Any vendor that we use, do help us to outsource the business processes, but they are a big area of risk.

“If we can adequately assess how they're handling data, how they're protecting it, we can also at the same time protect the security of that data from our company.”

Roy Hill data privacy specialist Brenda van Rensburg advised businesses to create internal rules for staff when sharing company or customer information.

“I was actually just talking about building an algorithm, because I've been studying AI, in regard to [calculating] sharing capability,” she said.

“If you took one data field to collect data, and we have one person that shares it with one business … and there's 25 people who accessed the data field … and 25 per cent of those people share it with 10 people or 10 businesses each, how many people have accessed that data field?

“It’s 1,250 people that accessed your data, on layer one.

“When we share an information, we're going to think about that knock on effect and be respectful of those rules so we can protect not only our employees, but our customers as well.”

Mrs van Rensburg said hyperlinking documents in emails instead of including attachments would control the access to materials.