Increasingly, businesses are looking to adopt data protection certifications and standards for myriad reasons, including enhancing consumer trust, demonstrating compliance when contracting with partners and managing regulatory risk. We have prepared a high-level comparison to guide Singapore businesses in determining which certification or certifications could be the best fit. ISO/IEC 27701:2019 Who can apply: All organisations, private or public, regardless of size and for-profit status. Data controllers and processors/intermediaries are eligible to apply. Features: The…

Last week (28 November 2019), the European Banking Authority (EBA) released the final version of its report entitled ‘EBA Guidelines on ICT and security risk management’ (the Guidelines) (link here) on the mitigation and management of financial institutions’ (FIs) information and communication technology (ICT) and security risks. We highlight below some of the key takeaways. Background The EBA released a previous version of the guidelines back in 2017. The Guidelines will incorporate and…

On 14 November 2019, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) published guidance (link here for organisations that process special category personal data (the Guidance). Previously, organisations tended to focus only on GDPR article 9 processing bases when processing special category personal data. Following this update from the ICO, organisations are reminded that they must have both GDPR article 6 and article 9 processing bases when they process special category personal data. Additionally, in some cases,…

On 19 November 2019, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) published its report on open banking and its implications for banks and banking supervision. The report builds on the BCBS’ previous findings on open banking and application programming interfaces (APIs) in its 2018 report (“Sound practices on the implications of FinTech developments for banks and bank supervisors”). We highlight findings from the report from a data protection perspective below. Background The report (including the…

On 12 November 2019, at its 15th plenary meeting, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) adopted final guidelines on the territorial scope of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (the guidelines) following public consultation. We have previously considered the draft guidelines on our blog. The first of the two blogs considered the extra-territorial scope of the GDPR (here), and the second blog post considered the need for non-European Union (EU) controllers to designate…

The Lower Saxony Data Protection Authority (Lower Saxony DPA) has audited 50 large and medium-sized organizations on their implementation of the requirements of the GDPR since June 2018. On November 5, 2019, the Lower Saxony DPA released a report summarizing its findings (Report; available in German here). Summary of findings in the Report We previously reported on our blog that the Lower Saxony DPA has released the checklist it used in assessing the GDPR…

On 4 November 2019, Singapore’s Parliament published a draft amendment to the Banking Act. Under the amendment, all banks will be required to evaluate the ability of their service providers (whether these be a branch or office, or an external party) to: (a) safeguard the confidentiality and integrity, and ensure the availability, of the banks’ information; and (b) protect all customer information against unauthorised disclosure, retention, or use. Where the service provider is a branch…