Kia ora koutou,
Just a short note from me this week to let our members in the Asia-Pacific region know the New Zealand Office of the Privacy Commissioner released its schedule of virtual events for Privacy Week. This includes sessions on responsible artificial intelligence, privacy and children in the social media space, collaboration between privacy and security professionals, and a very interesting-looking session on dark patterns across the internet. The commissioner also released a set of promotional posters and social media items to help agencies celebrate the week. In addition to these events, the IAPP is hosting two Privacy Week happy hour KnowledgeNet events in Wellington and Auckland. More details will follow soon.
If anyone needs some good material to persuade your organization to take privacy seriously or to help your executive team understand why it’s important to mark Privacy Week each year, take a look at the IAPP's new Privacy and Consumer Trust at-a-glance infographic, which presents key data points from the IAPP's first study of how consumers' privacy perceptions affect their trust in companies that collect and process their personal information. The figures are interesting and sobering. Out of the global consumers surveyed, 68% said they are somewhat or very concerned about their privacy online. Of global consumers, 80% said they would stop doing business with a company after it suffers a data breach, compared to 63% of New Zealanders who said they would change service providers due to poor privacy and security practices. Of global consumers, 57% thought the use of AI poses a privacy threat, and a staggeringly low 29% of global consumers said it is easy to understand company privacy practices, telling us we all need to do better at transparency.
It's all hands on deck as privacy pros in the APAC region prepare for Privacy Week. Good luck to you all, and I hope to see many of you in Auckland or Wellington during Privacy Week.
Ngā mihi.