The loss of personal information belonging to millions of Ontario voters earlier this year shows that even good privacy policies can be useless if they’re not followed.Canada’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, released a new report that calls on organizations to beef up the enforcement and understanding of their privacy policies after the breach. In April, Elections Ontario discovered a major privacy breach when two memory sticks containing the names, addresses and birthdates of some 2.4 million voters were lost. The information also indicated whether they voted in the last election. Cavoukian previously found that the staff who lost the USB keys didn’t encrypt the files because they didn’t know what encryption meant. Her report makes seven recommendations to improve privacy protection at any organization, including developing privacy education and awareness training programs. It also says organizations should have a protocol in place to deal with a possible privacy breach that includes notifying affected people as soon as possible.
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W. Barry Nixon is the COO, PreemploymentDirectory.com the leading background screening information portal and online worldwide directory of professional background screening firms and Suppliers to the background screening industry. He co-authored the landmark book, Background Screening & Investigations: Managing Hiring Risk from the HR and Security Perspective. He also is the publisher of award winning newsletters, The Background Buzz and The Global Background Screener, and the author of the Background Checks column in PI Magazine.
In addition, Barry is a past recipient of the elite ‘Top 25 Influential People in Security’ by Security Magazine and past Co-Chair, International Committee for the National Association for Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS). He currently serves as a Global Ambassador for NAPBS.
You can contact Barry at 1-949-770-5264 or online at wbnixon@preemploymentdirectory.com