Roles and Responsibilities in Maintaining Data Privacy

This paper discusses the roles and responsibilities of the government of Australia, businesses, and individuals in maintaining data privacy. It highlights the importance of data security and the measures that can be taken at different levels to protect private information.

Running head: BIG IDEAS
Big Ideas
June 6
2019

BIG IDEAS 1
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Roles and Responsibilities of the government of Australia, businesses, and individuals in
maintaining data privacy........................................................................................................2
The role and Responsibility of an Individual.....................................................................3
Role and Responsibility of the Australian Government....................................................3
Role and Responsibility of Business/ Industry in maintaining data privacy.....................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................7

BIG IDEAS 2
Introduction
Data privacy is related to how a piece of data or information must be managed depending on
its relative prominence. For example, a person may not mind sharing his/her name with
someone they are not familiar while introducing themselves; however, there is other data or
information that that individual will not like to share (Leiss, 2012). On the other hand, while
opening a bank account an individual has to share tremendous of the personal information
beyond the name. In the era of the digital environment, the concept of data privacy is applied
to acute personal information, which is also called as personal health information, and
personally identifiable information (Niall, Nicholas and Patrick, 2018). The time private data
reaches in the wrong hand, it is used with wrong intentions. A data breach at the agency of
the government can, for instance, provide the top secret information to the enemy of the state
or country. A data breach of the business can provide proprietary data to the rival
organization. Hence, it is very important to ensure data privacy at a business, individual, and
government level. Therefore, this paper is being presented to present the roles and
responsibilities of the government of Australia, individuals, and businesses in data privacy.
Roles and Responsibilities of the government of Australia, businesses, and individuals in
maintaining data privacy
When people think about protecting themselves from the agencies and businesses from losing
data or being hacked, they more feel like a passenger traveling in a plane. The thing that
people can do is trusts the business with which they are involved because there is not a lot to
do. It is obvious that people must provide personal information to trusted organizations
(Magid, 2013). However, when lacking victims are someone like Target, Universities, Sony
Network, and Wal-Mart, there is not much to do. For instance, The Australian National
University has identified a major data breach in which a major amount of student and staff

BIG IDEAS 3
data has been leaked and was accessed by a “sophisticated operator”. Around 200000 people
were affected due to a data breach (Martin, 2019).
The role and Responsibility of an Individual
It is obvious that at an individual level people cannot prevent such attacks, but they can
protect themselves at some level. The major role that people can perform in protecting the
information is making using strong passwords and responsibility to assure that the same
password is not used for multiple accounts (Leenes, Brakel and Gutwirth, 2018). It is known
that this is tough but there are a number of ways to make it easy. One option that is possible
is to make use of password safe such as LastPass or RoboForm that are designed to remember
the password and enter them for the users (Magid, 2013). They even create random
passwords that are tough to crack. Another option that could be adopted is using the first
letter of every work in the phrase that can be remembered but could not be guessed by
anyone and to include symbols and numbers.
Role and Responsibility of the Australian Government
The political structure of Australia is very strong which is due to the policies implemented by
the government bodies for the protection of citizens and businesses. In regards to maintaining
data privacy, the government of Australia has always performed major role by educating the
public, protecting its own structure, and confirming the businesses reveal any possible
privacy or safety threats and obey their stated policies. The Australian Government is
responsible for applying different privacy practices for the protection of data privacy. Few of
the steps taken by the Government are:
The Australian Government Agencies Privacy Code introduced in 2017 and initiated
operations on 1 July 2018. The role of the code is to set the precise requirements and applied
steps that agencies should consider while following the Australian Privacy Principle 1.2. It

BIG IDEAS 4
needs agencies to adopt best practice approach to support in creating a reliable, high level of
personal information management all over the agencies of the Australian Government. The
Code improves the current privacy competence in the agencies, establishes higher
transparency in the practices of information handling, and nurture a culture where major
importance is provided to the privacy and value to the personal information. The Code is the
sight of the Australian Government agencies committed to the safety of privacy, and support
in increasing confidence and building trust of the public in managing the practices of personal
information (Australian Government, 2019a).
The code demands every government agency of Australia to have a privacy officer. The
OAIC has designed a Privacy Officer Toolkit that is comprised of custom-made direction and
resources to support Privacy Officers and different people responsible for operating functions
of privacy for their agency. This toolkit is also comprised of assistance regarding the number
of pertinent Code necessities, like the need to publish and maintain a list of Privacy Impact
Assessments, need to hand personal information record holdings, and few of the frequently
asked questions regarding the role of the Privacy Officer (Australian Government, 2019b).
Role and Responsibility of Business/ Industry in maintaining data privacy
The tech businesses and industries perform a major role by forming transparency and easy to
use features in order to enable users to opt-out of something that makes them uncomfortable,
comprising profiling and tracking cookies.
In addition to this, the businesses are responsible for giving warnings to their users regarding
any authorized use of the client's account or service. For instance, Facebook and Gmail
generate a warning message to the user's mobile number for any unauthorized use of the
account or account used from any other device other than the personal devices that are
generally accessed by the account holder (Yushi, 2013). As it is known that at the worldwide

BIG IDEAS 5
level, a high level of personal data is generated daily; customers are forcing legislators and
brands for greater control over the information. This is becoming more complicated because
businesses pivot towards models of subscription, where the relationship between customer
and brand are for longer term and fluid and include major uses of private and consumer
behaviour information. Ignoring the privacy needs of these customers places brands at higher
risk from penalties and fines to the loss of customer loyalty and trust. Due to this, the
regulatory environment and online businesses are getting stricter towards data privacy and
against a data breach (Bradbury, 2019).
Business today makes use of an electric system that is designed to operate confidential and
sensitive data. The systems that manage the information should be secured in the best way.
Data security is one of the key requirement of every business hence the business is
responsible to meet some of the requirements (Inspired Tech, 2019).
Data backup must be done regularly by every business. Backing up of the data is all about
regular copying, reordering, and storage of digital information. It could be done by making
use of the physical devices of data storage or through cloud servers (Nelson, 2011).
Data recovery is another way of data security. It is the procedure of retrieving the data that is
not being able to access because of damaged storage or corrupted storage.
Firewalls are used by the businesses as the system of network security. Firewall is designed
to monitor the traffic over network and control it with the help of fixed security riles. A
firewall is basically an obstacle between an internal and external network. Firewall helps
businesses in restricting the entry of all the wary incoming or outgoing traffic. It can protect
the system from the infection and dispersal of malware and different computer worms.
Network firewalls generally operated on the computer hardware (Shinder, 2011).

BIG IDEAS 6
Conclusion
The above paper has discussed the importance of data security for protecting the private
information of business, government, and individuals. The paper has majorly highlighted the
role and responsibility of the Australian government, businesses, and individuals in
maintaining data privacy. From the analysis, it has been identified that at an individual level
people must have a strong password for their account and they must be responsible to avoid
using the same password for multiple accounts. The paper has identified that the government
of Australian is performing a major role in preventing the data by increasing awareness
among public and businesses. They have met their responsibilities by establishing different
policies and practices such as the Australian Government Agencies Privacy Code.
Furthermore, the tech businesses perform a key role by creating transparency and easy to use
features to enable users to opt-out of something that makes them uncomfortable, comprising
profiling and tracking cookies. Businesses and industries meet their responsibilities by
providing a warning to the users regarding unauthorized access to their account.

BIG IDEAS 7
References
Australian Government (2019a) Australian Government Agencies Privacy Code [online].
Available from https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy-law/australian-government-agencies-
privacy-code/ [accessed 6 June 2019]
Australian Government (2019b) The Privacy Officer Toolkit [online]. Available from
https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy-officer-toolkit/ [accessed 6 June 2019]
Bradbury, D. (2019). The Big Data Responsibility: Companies’ Role in Protecting Consumer
Information [online]. Available from https://www.digitalriver.com/the-big-data-
responsibility-companies-role-in-protecting-consumer-information/ [accessed 6 June 2019]
Inspired Tech (2019) Why Data Security is So Important to Businesses of all Sizes [online].
Available from https://www.inspiredtechs.com.au/why-data-security-is-so-important-to-
businesses-of-all-sizes/ [accessed 6 June 2019]
Leenes, R., Brakel, R.V., and Gutwirth, S. (2018) Data Protection and Privacy: The Internet
of Bodies 1st ed. U.K: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Leiss, E.L. (2012) Principles of Data Security 2nd ed. Germany: Springer Science & Business
Media.
Magid, L. (2013) Online Privacy and Security is a Shared Responsibility: Government,
Industry and You [online]. Available from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2013/02/12/online-privacy-and-security-is-a-
shared-responsibility-government-industry-and-you/#1770ab9e5320 [accessed 6 June 2019]

BIG IDEAS 8
Martin, L. (2019) Australian National University hit by huge data breach [online]. Available
from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/04/australian-national-
university-hit-by-huge-data-breach [accessed 6 June 2019]
Nelson, S. (2011) Pro Data Backup and Recovery 1st ed. U.S: Apress.
Niall, M.A., Nicholas, A.H., and Patrick, R. (2018) Data Science For Cyber-security 1st ed.
U.S: World Scientific.
Shinder, T.W. (2011) The Best Damn Firewall Book Period 2nd ed. Netherlands: Elsevier.
Yushi, S. (2013) Enabling the New Era of Cloud Computing: Data Security, Transfer, and
Management: Data Security, Transfer, and Management 1st ed. U.K: IGI Global.