The Wall Street Journal conducted a roundtable discussion with privacy professionals on the current landscape for employee surveillance and monitoring. Topics covered include how widespread monitoring has become, legal limits and ethical versus non-ethical deployments. Electronic Privacy Information Center Senior Counsel John Davisson, Gartner Vice President of Human-Resources Research Brian Kropp and Future of Privacy Forum Senior Vice President of Policy John Verdi took part in the conversatio... Read More

Consent is one of the EU General Data Protection Regulation legal bases that can be used to justify the collection, handling or storage of personal data. For consent to be valid, it must be clearly distinguishable from other matters, intelligible and in clear and plain language, freely given, as easy to withdraw as it was to provide, specific, informed and unambiguous (GDPR Article 6, 7 and Recitals 32, 33 and 43). In the employment context, consent is deemed to be problematic. An actual or per... Read More

Amidst the shifting employment landscape created by COVID-19, employers requiring employees to disclose their vaccination status has become a hot — yet murky — topic rife with privacy-related risks. Vaccination requirements are expected to soon “become dominant in the workplace” due to President Joe Biden’s recent COVID-19 Action Plan. Some employers will be required to impose vaccine mandates for their employees; some will be required to ensure their employees are either vaccinated or tested we... Read More

The U.K. Information Commissioner's Office offered an update on its global coordination with six data protection authorities to convey privacy expectations for video conferencing platforms. In July 2020, the ICO joined regulators from Australia, Canada, China, Gibraltar, Hong Kong and Switzerland in an open letter to Microsoft, Google, Cisco and Zoom regarding preferred privacy practices and standards. The ICO reports the dialogue has "proven effective, efficient and mutually beneficial" while g... Read More

While it has become as vital a tool as any during the COVID-19 pandemic, teleconferencing platform Zoom Video Communications has faced its share of privacy and security challenges as it adapted its systems to an unexpected boom to its clientele. That adaptation will now go steps further under orders from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has announced a proposed settlement with Zoom related to allegations of deceptive and unfair infosecurity practices that risk users' privacy and secur... Read More

The Washington Post reports companies have begun surveilling employees and their productivity as they work from home during the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition to monitoring programs for determining employees' active work hours and online activities, organizations are also instituting other forms of oversight, including multiple daily check-ins, always-on webcam policies and "productivity scores." The tactics have drawn backlash as David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of the remote-work-software ... Read More

The Wall Street Journal conducted a roundtable discussion with privacy professionals on the current landscape for employee surveillance and monitoring. Topics covered include how widespread monitoring has become, legal limits and ethical versus non-ethical deployments. Electronic Privacy Information Center Senior Counsel John Davisson, Gartner Vice President of Human-Resources Research Brian Kropp and Future of Privacy Forum Senior Vice President of Policy John Verdi took part in the conversatio... Read More

DTEX and the Ponemon Institute published a survey revealing 63% of IT professionals believe their companies place an importance on employee privacy, Infosecurity Magazine reports. The survey collected the opinions from 1,249 professionals on their organization's efforts to protect employees' sensitive data. Only 34% of respondents indicated their organization effectively protected employees' data. Additionally, 64% of professionals said tracking employee productivity in a privacy-preserving mann... Read More

Password reuse across multiple websites and company logins is a major weak link in company security systems. In a survey CSID conducted in 2012 on password habits, 61 percent of the respondents reused the same password for multiple sites, and 44 percent of respondents reported they change their passwords once a year or less. Employee password reuse creates a new layer of risk for businesses, especially when major enterprises are hacked. A breach today can affect more than just the initial company—it can affect your business and many others, writes Joe Ross in this exclusive for The Privacy Advisor. Read More

STX Next’s Global CTO Survey found 51% of global organizations don’t have a “bring-your-own-device” policy, though more employees are using devices at home due to the pandemic, Infosecurity Magazine reports. Among organizations that have a BYOD policy, 13% is not using multifactor authentication, and researchers noted many organizations are not in a hurry to adopt security processes. STX Next Chairman Maciej Dziergwa said, “It is imperative businesses take measures to address these insufficienci... Read More

France's data protection authority, the CNIL, published guidance on best practices for privacy and data security associated with the bring-your-own-device concept. The CNIL noted employers are responsible for the security of company data stored on devices that are not their own, including an employee's personal device. Additionally, the CNIL recommended BYOD issues can be reduced by risk assessment and formalized measures within security policies. (Original post is in French.)Full Story... Read More

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), while well-intentioned, can make IT managers, CIOs and especially employees want to pull their hair out. The downfall of most Enterprise Mobile Management (EMM) and Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions is that they pose too many restrictions or too much control over the user’s device. Quite simply, they don’t have the end user in mind. An employee may conclude that the employer’s promise of EMM device containerization is more of an illusion of privacy than a re... Read More