Dear, privacy pros.

I trust that you are keeping well in the midst of the turmoil going on in various parts of the world right now.

Thankfully, it has been relatively quiet on the privacy front this past week. One of the articles in this week’s dashboard that caught my eye was a piece from WSJ on how tech companies like Palantir Technologies have called out regulatory risks in the privacy space as having a major impact on their business in their filings before going public. As pointed out in the article, the privacy regulatory landscape has seen tectonic shifts in recent years, for example, with the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation and California Consumer Privacy Act, which are just starting to be enforced.

There is also the impact of second-order effects that these changes might bring about, with a number of countries around the world slated to introduce new or enhanced legislation that mirror some of the concepts in these laws. The Personal Data Protection Commission and Ministry of Communications and Information of Singapore have, for example, proposed a fairly significant overhaul of the 2012 Personal Data Protection Act, summarized here. This follows extensive public consultations conducted over the past few years and consolidates a number of developments since the enactment of the PDPA. We covered a number of these proposed amendments in the virtual Singapore KnowledgeNet chapter meeting held in July.

I know the PDPC has also planned a number of sessions around these proposed amendments during the upcoming Privacy Awareness Week, from 21 to 27 Sept., including a presentation by the Cybersecurity and Data Protection Committee of the Law Society of Singapore and a roundtable discussion hosted by the PDPC and Singapore Academy of Law. The inaugural DPO Symposium will be held on the first day, and practice-focused workshops covering a host of other topics have been scheduled. More information about the events taking place that week can be found here.

In particular, I am happy to announce that the IAPP will host one of the sessions during Privacy Awareness Week on “Managing Third-Party Vendor Risk: Tips for Protecting Your Business,” which you can sign up for here. This session will be hosted by the IAPP’s Jim Campbell, Region Operations Manager, ANZ, and feature highly experienced practitioners from the IAPP’s Asia Advisory Board on the panel. I have no doubt that this discussion will be highly relevant and insightful and would urge all of you to attend if you can.

Until the next introduction, please stay safe and stay well.