South Australian organisations dealing with private information are being urged by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) to put accountability at the very centre of their practices when handling information.
Leading the call, Australian Information Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner, Angelene Falk said doing so would give individuals greater confidence that their personal information would be handled fairly and securely when they engaged with an organisation.
“Australians expect that their personal information will be handled with care when they choose to engage with a product or service, and are more likely to entrust their data to organisations that have demonstrated effective management of their privacy,” Commissioner Falk said.
She said the OAIC’s latest Notifiable Data Breaches Report showed it had received 464 data breach notifications from July to December 2021, an increase of six per cent compared with the previous period.
The Commissioner said malicious or criminal attacks remained the leading source of breaches, accounting for 256 notifications — 55 per cent of the total and down nine per cent in number from 281.
“However, this was more than offset by a significant rise in breaches due to human error, increasing by 43 per cent to 190, after a dip in the previous period,” she said.
“The health sector remains the highest reporting industry sector notifying 18 per cent of all breaches, followed by finance (12 per cent).”
Commissioner Falk said the Notifiable Data Breaches Scheme was well established after four years of operation and the OAIC expected organisations to have strong accountability measures in place to prevent and manage data breaches.
“The Scheme is now mature and we expect organisations to have accountability measures in place to ensure full compliance with its requirements,” she said.
“A key objective of the Scheme is to protect individuals by enabling them to respond quickly to a data breach to minimise the risk of harm.”
The OAIC’s 32-page Report can be accessed at this PS News link.
