Hello and greetings from Hong Kong!

The weather is finally starting to cool here as autumn establishes itself. It is a welcome relief after a long hot summer.

Despite the cooling weather, we are sitting in a hot bed of data privacy activity. Regulators in Asia-Pacific continue to educate on the impact of the GDPR in their own countries. This week, the Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner began to promote to local organizations educational activities in understanding the GDPR standards and possible impact on operations.

In Australia, where mandatory breach notification laws are set to come into effect next year, Sen. Bridget McKenzie, chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, announced that there is also talk of other laws to follow along the lines of the GDPR. Her comments come after data protection and cybersecurity were bought into focus yet again in Australia, after a data breach involving 50,000 Australians was exposed in the media last week.

Moving on to other developments in the region, the Singapore Personal Data Protection Commission has proposed stricter regulations to govern the use of national identification numbers by issuing a public consultation on guidelines on the collection and use of the ID numbers. The ID numbers are a key personal identifier in Singapore and their misuse or disclosure could lead to fraud and identity theft. Interestingly, while Singapore is increasing protection over personal identifiers, it is also looking to facilitate data sharing between government bodies in a proposed data sharing law.

And so the data protection journey continues in this part of the world by watching what is happening elsewhere and forging ahead with new initiatives.

Until next time!