­­Greetings, fellow privacy professionals.

I hope you are safe and well.

Put simply, the biggest news in Asia these last few days is China’s draft of the Personal Data Protection Law, which was released 21 Oct. for public consultation and will certainly change the landscape for businesses operating in the region, whether you are based in China or you deal with Chinese customers. The full original version can be accessed here in Chinese, and the unofficial English version can be viewed here. Once enforced, this will be China’s first personal information protection law at the national level, emphasizing the importance of data protection and need for organizations to comply, and I defer to legal experts and their timely commentary. This is definitely something to keep a watch on and look forward to sharing more details on this in early 2021 after the law is enforced.

In other regional news, we are seeing more developments in APAC and especially in Australia, from the setup of a cyber and privacy resilience group by the New South Wales government, as a direct response to a cyberattack earlier this year that resulted in 73 gigabytes of data breached comprising 3.8 million documents stolen, through to more active discissions about the Data Availability and Transparency Bill. The proposed data-sharing scheme would enable broad disclosures of public sector data, including personal information, which if becomes law, the DAT Bill will dramatically overturn more than 30 years of privacy jurisprudence.

Please also remember the Hong Kong Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data “Privacy-Friendly Awards 2021,” and note the submission deadline is 6 Nov. This is a great way for local companies in Hong Kong to showcase their data privacy strategy and what they have achieved within their organization. Click here to learn more about the awards.

Finally, I would like to inform our Hong Kong IAPP members that we are in the midst of planning our next KnowledgeNet, which will be our final one for the calendar year. We plan to have this 24 Nov., and more details are to come, but I am excited the new Privacy Commissioner Ada Chung is joining me for a casual conversation for the first time since she has taken office and will discuss her plans and predictions for 2021. We also plan to cover some other interesting topics as requested by members, such as the "Schrems II" impact on businesses in the region.

I look forward to you joining the final HK IAPP event for the year, and registrations will open soon.

That’s all for now, folks, so take care, and stay home and stay safe!

Keep safe; keep secure.