Amendments to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) increased the enforcement powers of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), introducing new civil penalty tiers and giving the OAIC the ability to issue infringement notices for minor breaches. This marks the beginning of a stronger regulatory environment for organisations that do not comply with their obligations under the Privacy Act.
If you are not already thinking about boosting your organisation’s privacy resilience, now is the time.
Building privacy resilience
Building privacy resilience requires taking a privacy by design approach. This includes embedding privacy within the core of your operations and ensuring that privacy is not an afterthought. Privacy needs to be a central consideration in decision-making processes, policies, and everyday operations. This means proactively identifying and assessing privacy risks, embedding privacy positive practices into existing workflows, and making privacy a key responsibility across all areas rather than a siloed issue.
What are the foundational activities you should do?
- Know your organisation and your obligations
- Conduct a data inventory and mapping exercise to identify where and how personal information is collected, used, and disclosed within your organisation.
- Document the privacy obligations that apply to your organisation and assess your compliance against them.
- Set up a privacy governance and operating model
- Assign ownership for privacy responsibilities to a senior employee. If your organisation is large, consider a decentralised model where privacy is the responsibility of individual business units, with a central privacy office.
- Develop a suite of privacy management policies
- At a minimum, create a suite of policies supplementing your organisation’s overarching privacy policy, including a data breach response plan, individual rights and complaints policy, third party disclosure policy and a data retention and disposal policy. These policies will guide your organisation’s approach to privacy.
- Set up a privacy risk management framework
- Implement a systemic approach for identifying, assessing, documenting and reporting on privacy risks. Conduct regular privacy risk assessments and embed them into business practice, such as in change management processes
- Consider conducting Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs). For more information on when and how to complete one, see: Don’t let privacy go MIA, complete a PIA! – Griffin Legal
- Consider leveraging existing Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) tools used by other functions in the organisation to manage privacy risk.
- Develop a process that reports significant privacy risks to senior leadership. This can be through a dedicated privacy committee or by integrating privacy discussions into existing Audit and Risk committees.
- Develop privacy training and awareness program
- Implement a training and awareness program to educate your employees about privacy risks and requirements. Encourage privacy literacy across the organisation, as most employees will play a role in identifying and reporting privacy risks. Leverage existing teams, such as Audit, Risk, IT, and Cybersecurity, by incorporating privacy training into their existing awareness programs.
Other considerations for building privacy resilience
Beyond the core activities, there are additional steps to consider:
- Promote privacy reform awareness within your organisation by ensuring all staff are informed about the upcoming changes to privacy laws and understand what it means for them.
- Identify the right leaders to support the implementation of new privacy obligations and drive privacy initiatives throughout the organisation.
- Develop a clear, actionable privacy strategy that aligns with your regulatory obligations, meets customer expectations, and fits within your organisation’s overall risk profile.
Conclusion
With the new era of tougher enforcement measures for privacy infringements, organisations must adopt a proactive, structured approach to privacy management, embedding privacy practices into the organisational culture and continually assessing and mitigating risks.
A mature privacy function ensures not only compliance with the Privacy Act but also builds trust with your customers and stakeholders.
Now is the time to act—don’t let privacy be an afterthought. Contact Griffin Legal to help build your privacy resilience.