sensitive information – Cyber Law Watch

Good practice – the storage of COVID-19 vaccination certificates

Oct 24 2021

By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Ella Richards

As the public’s focus in NSW and Victoria turns quickly to reopening and emerging from lockdowns, we have experienced an increased focus across the country on vaccination rates. Public health orders and laws in several Australian jurisdictions have changed to require businesses to, amongst other things, collect, store and hold vaccine information about their workers, and to take steps to ensure unvaccinated persons do not enter their premises.

This has led to businesses collecting vaccination information including in the form of government-issued COVID-19 vaccination certificates. However the collection of this information creates additional legal and cyber security risks. Some federal government issued certificates contain an individual healthcare identifier (IHI) – a number individually identifies an Australian for healthcare purposes (it is more sensitive than your Medicare number). The IHI combined with the individual’s name and date of birth creates an attractive opportunity for cyber criminals. It is so sensitive that it comes with its own specific legislation sanctions including criminal penalties for breach.

Businesses should ensure they have the right processes in place when collecting and storing this kind of information to avoid exposure to civil and criminal penalties, including up to two years’ imprisonment for improper use or disclosure of an IHI.

For more information on the appropriate processes for collection and storage of vaccination information, please contact Cameron Abbott from our Privacy team. K&L Gates will keep you informed of any further updates.

“This is a public health app, it’s not a surveillance app”: Review finds “nothing particularly disturbing” about the Federal Government’s coronavirus tracing app

Apr 23 2020

By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Michelle Aggromito and Rebecca Gill

The Federal Government’s coronavirus tracing app has raised some privacy concerns amongst the Australian public. Even some of our government Ministers have ruled out downloading the app due to such concerns! However, the independent cyber security body tasked with reviewing the app has said that it has found no major concerns with it.

“Totally Clueless”: Dating app Grindr reported for breach of privacy rules

Jan 24 2020

By Cameron Abbott, Max Evans and Florence Fermanis

Dating apps, for many young people, are a fact of life. Meeting someone these days in real-life rather than through a simple swipe right appears to have become the exception, belonging more to any number of 90s teen “romcoms” than it does to real life.

According to an article by Reuters however, in recent times dating app Grindr has been the subject of a complaint by the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC) in relation to a breach of privacy rules as set out in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, implemented in 2018.

Could your ERP system make you a victim of cybercrime?

Oct 29 2019

By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace

We frequently blog here about incidents where companies, government agencies or public have suffered data or security breaches at the hands of hackers. They’re often incidents that come to light because they affect the public in some way – by shutting down hospitals, exposing sensitive personal information, or threatening government security. But what about hacks that, while not having wide-reaching public implications, go to the core of a business’ operations?

The co-existence of open data and privacy in a digital world

Dec 22 2017

By Cameron Abbott, Keely O’Dowd and Giles Whittaker

Earlier this week researchers from the University of Melbourne released a report on the successful re-identification of Australian patient medical data that formed part of a de-identified open dataset.

In September 2016, the researchers were able to re-identify the longitudinal medical billing records of 10% of Australians, which equates to about 2.9 million people. The report outlines the techniques the researches used to re-identify the data and the ease at which this can be done with the right know-how and skill set (ie someone with an undergraduate computing degree could re-identify the data).

At first glance, the report exposes the poor handling of the dataset by the Department of Health. Which brings into focus the need for adequate contractual obligations regarding use and handling of personal information, and the need to ensure adequate liability protections are addressed even where the party’s intentions are for all personal information to be de-identified. The commercial risk with de-identified data has shown to be the equivalent of a dormant volcano.

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