“A key finding from the NZ Institute of Directors’ Director Sentiment Survey report, released late last year, was that a significant proportion of boards were n

“A key finding from the NZ Institute of Directors’ Director Sentiment Survey report, released late last year, was that a significant proportion of boards were not sufficiently prepared for a digital future and had an “it won’t happen to us” approach. The message from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner is “wake up to yourselves”. We talk to organisations almost every week who are counting the cost of a cyber data breach. Can you risk the impact to your customers and your reputation?” Agencies should not be collecting or retaining personal information unless it is necessary for a lawful purpose connected with their function or activity. All agencies should have a personal information retention schedule that they review regularly. The simple discipline of deciding how long information will be retained as you collect it and acting on these decisions will save you and your customers a lot of pain.” So many panels, surveys, commissions, and watchdog groups state the obvious and yet little action on those recommendations is ever taken. In fact, many times the actions that are taken exacerbate the problem. The recently proposed bills to try and deal with TikTok and the social media data collection practices is a great example of this: propose sweeping new laws that violate privacy and free speech in order to combat privacy issues.