Privacy and Protection of Personal Information Services

Privacy and protection of personal information services

02/04/2010 – 1:22 pm by John Giles

Our practice focuses on all legal issues that impact on privacy and the processing of personal information. In the recent past we have built up an extensive body of knowledge and advised a large variety of businesses, both domestic and international, on legal issues. our activities have included:

Making representations to the South African Law Commission for several clients on the Data Privacy Issue Paper published for comment in October 2003 and the Data Privacy Discussion Paper published for comment in October 2005 in response to the Protection of Personal Information Bill;
Conducting Privacy Impact Assessments for several clients;
Preparing Privacy Policies for several clients;
Providing legal advice around various privacy related issues, especially around cross border data flow issues;
Analysing the various decisions of courts and information commissioners across the world focusing on where companies have been penalised with a view to identifying risk trends which are then used to give an indication of where companies should be focusing their efforts.

Our clients include:

marketers,
retailers,
financial institutions,
health care providers,
industry bodies,
directory providers,
and many others.

We offer the following privacy and protection of personal information services in line with our view that compliance is a process. Each step leads to the next.

(Step 1 - Awareness) Be aware of the issues and applicable law

We can help you to be aware of and learn about the protection of personal information and the law that requires it. We do this by:

conducting a seminar called How will the PPI Bill affect you?
providing online legal guidance on privacy and the protection of personal information on Online Legal….

We make you aware by applying our experience and knowledge to your specific circumstances.

(Step 2 - Assessment) Assess, determine the gap, and find solutions

Before you can draft your Privacy Policy, guidelines, procedures and other documents, you need to have a privacy strategy. The strategy should take into account the nature of your organisation, its business activities and needs. The strategies range from minimalist to broad.

You also need to understand which of current business activities involve personal information (PI) and which laws apply to those activities. We do this by conducting a privacy impact assessment.We conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment. It comprises 2 stages:

Adopting a Privacy Strategy and mapping you PI to activities and laws (using our privacy program tool);
Reviewing of existing practices relating to privacy; monitoring; information security and document retention.

(Step 3 - Solutions) Implement solutions

We can help you implement privacy solutions, including formulating your Privacy Policy and Procedures.

(Step 4 - Review) Ongoing review

We support you to review your situation on an ongoing basis and ensure that you continue to comply.

The benefits

Our PPI Services will help you to:

Identify the sections of the PPI Bill that are relevant to you
Determine the impact of the PPI Bill on your business
Determine your factual situation by mapping your activities concerning personal information
Identify the role players
Classify the data subjects
Focus on the activities that are critical to your business
Prioritise your next steps
Fast track your privacy compliance efforts
Get clarity on where you are and where you need to be
Determine where you currently are with regard to privacy ‘maturity’ when assessed against the PPI Bill
Determine the gap between your reality and compliance (usually a gap analysis)
Determine whether there is anything you should be doing in preparation for the enactment of the PPI Bill
Find solutions to fill the gap - determining what solutions you need
Reduce the overall cost of compliance because you can do much of the work.

Through our PPI Services you either get assurance that you comply or we help you to find solutions to ensure that you comply. We will also point you to material that you can read to get up to speed.

Get a proposal from us

For more information or a proposal, please contact privacy@michalsons.com. Our proposal will be broken down in phases. Each step is dependent on the previous step. For example, you do not know what solutions you need to implement, unless you have assessed where you are and what solutions you require. Even if you know what solutions you need, it is often not possible to implement them with having done your homework. For example, to draft your Privacy Policy you need to know how you process personal information. We can only provide you with a quote for a piece of work if we know the scope of the piece of work.

Michalsons Attorneys