After a gestation period that would make African Bush Elephants proud, it is finally here…
It would be an understatement to say that data breach notification laws have been on the table for some years in Australia. The long-awaited mandatory data breach laws, which passed the Senate on Monday, are the result of a long and winding five year road through the Australian Parliament, three governments and many abandoned attempts. The Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Act 2016, which amends the Privacy Act 1988, will legally compel organisations to disclose a data breach to the Australian Privacy Commissioner and affected individuals in certain circumstances.
When will the regime start?
At the time of writing, an exact commencement date has not been set (though our bet is that it will be within the next 12 months).
What’s it all about?
Basically, the legislation requires an entity to report a ‘serious data breach’ to customers, the Privacy Commissioner and, potentially, the media.
What is a ‘serious data breach’ you ask? Well, given the importance of this term to the notification regime, it is not ideal that more objective certainty has not been provided. We do know that a serious data breach includes unauthorised access to, disclosure of, or loss of customer information held by the entity (for example personal information, credit reporting information or tax file information) and puts individuals affected at ‘real risk of serious harm.’ This will require judgement calls to be made by organisations as to when notification is required to be made, introducing compliance uncertainty, at least until a number of incidents have arisen and been considered by the Privacy Commissioner.
The notification should include specific details including the information involved and how those affected can respond to the incident (by cancelling credit cards or changing a passwords for example). The entity must not only make such a notification after a breach has been known to have occurred, but also when it becomes aware that there are reasonable grounds to believe that there has been an eligible data breach. The entity must comply with these notification steps as soon as practicable. We note too that there are also quite robust obligations to undertake investigations into whether there has been a data breach where an entity has a ‘suspicion’ that there may have been such a breach.
It is recommended that entities currently bound by the Privacy Act review their internal procedures to update data breach response plans and related requirements to align with the new requirements. Easy, huh?
Well, not so fast. We all know that privacy provides fertile ground for legal exposure but also reputation and brand damage. If an obligation to notify arises, how do you manage the potentially competing demands of legally mandated notification with PR advice which, often, recommends against notification unless you have first identified the problem, resolved it/put in place workarounds and ideally come to some view on ‘customer compensation’. Crisis management advisers may well be popping the odd champagne cork or two (although probably not Krug or Cristal just yet).
Also, in a world where personal information is increasingly the subject of third party processing and storage arrangements, how will your compliance obligations be cascaded into the agreements with those third party suppliers? Do any existing ‘compliance with law’ obligations extend to cover the operational requirements of the new regime? Are contract amendments required? What leverage do you have to require those amendments? How can you provide for contract certainty where the legislative requirements are not themselves absolutely crystal clear? Will third party providers, particularly global vendors such as cloud providers, accept obligations to ‘self-police’ breach and disclosure matters?
Maybe not so easy after all…
Consequences of non-compliance
If an individual or business fails to comply with the new notification legislation, it can be liable for serious or repeated interferences with the privacy of an individual and can face a civil penalty of up to $360,000 and $1.8 million respectively.
How will the new laws impact your business?
The US and EU have already established advanced regulation in this area. While Australia is late to the party, the overall effect of the laws for Australia will align – to some extent – privacy requirements with a wide range of other jurisdictions. For international companies operating already under other mandatory breach notification regimes, the changes may be minimal, such as tweaking internal compliance functions. However, for companies with local footprints only, these changes may be more significant.
We realise that the legislation has not yet commenced but reviewing your business’ privacy regime would not be a bad place to start. It should also be a priority to ensure your customers information is not compromised in any way and to ensure you have operational procedures in place to adequately manage a data breach event. Thinking this through your existing and future supplier environment and the nature of required upstream contract obligations will also be needed.
Response to the new laws?
Despite the bill only being passed yesterday, concerns with the legislation have already been expressed by legislators (Senator Cory Bernardi for one). Specifically, some have criticised the ability of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) to manage the new regime given its current resourcing levels.
Additionally, others are concerned that the legislation is one of the strictest disclosure laws in the world. Its threshold is relatively low as disclosure must be made by the entity not only if it knows a breach has occurred but in the event they believe a breach may have occurred (plus the onerous investigation obligations that are triggered by having a ‘suspicion’ that a breach may have occured). This can be seen as both a positive and a negative depending on what which side of the privacy debate spectrum you sit on.
Senator Bernardi has also called out what he considers to be the unnecessary red tape and the ‘lack of specificity.’ Specifically, he claims that, ‘a serious breach’ is too broadly defined in the laws suggesting that someone with a mere ‘mailing list could fall foul’ of the new rules. Some of these arguments were supported by the recently formed group, Data Governance Australia, whose CEO Graeme Samuels (former head of the ACCC) stated that the legislation was ‘heavy handed’ and suggested a voluntary industry code of conduct instead.
On the other side are those who put the privacy of the individuals above the concerns of over regulation. Senator Penny Wong for example has pointed out that before these laws commence, a government agency, a bank or an online store can incur a breach of an individual’s data and would not have to alert the individual to protect themselves (mainly out of fear of damage to the corporation’s reputation).
So, what will the OAIC do? Again, if we were placing bets we would probably place a responsible wager on the Privacy Commissioner pursuing a suitable ‘example’ in the initial 12 months of the regimes.
Commentary
In Timothy Pilgrim’s (Australia’s Privacy Commissioner as well as the Acting Information Commissioner) statement made yesterday, he welcomed the new data breach legislation and working with the government, businesses and consumer groups in preparation for commencement of the new laws.
However, as noted, it is difficult to escape the reality that the legislation adds further grey areas to an already difficult area of law for businesses to navigate (as the Privacy Act in Australia is largely a ‘principles-based’, as opposed to a prescriptive, regime). For example, the lack of specification as to what constitutes ‘serious harm.’ The interpretation of such ambiguities and the overall application of the laws can only be clarified through a combination of Privacy Commissioner guidance and eventual action.
On a practical level, another potential problem of this legislation is that the data breach scheme could lead to ‘notification fatigue’ among members of the public. This means that a bombardment of notifications could eventually undermine the effectiveness of the entire reporting scheme. As the cyber threat environment continues to evolve, and as ‘big data’ analytics and the internet of things continue to expand in Australia, the chances of a breaches occurring (and such breaches meeting the required standard) could increase dramatically and ‘notification fatigue’ could come with it.
Ultimately, if the new notification regime was in itself perceived to provide something of a panacea for individuals, and to provide greater clarity to business in terms of the Legislature’s requirements, in our view that perception can be challenged.
