“Ensuring good privacy practices are built into businesses from the start is vital” says Privacy Commissioner, Michael Webster.
Whether through a malicious act, human error or system error, privacy breaches have a detrimental effect on small businesses. Ensuring the privacy of your customers personal information through established privacy policies and procedures is beneficial not only to satisfy your obligations under NZ privacy law, but to retain existing customers’ trust and further grow your business.
Following a survey of over 350 small businesses within New Zealand, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and business.govt.nz concluded that businesses generally understood privacy issues, however established privacy policies or procedures were not always present.
The four key insights from the survey were:
- That an understanding of privacy does not correlate with good privacy practices.
- Privacy risks differ between sectors.
- Systems need to be established to provide people with their own information promptly.
- The risk of a privacy breach is about the same, whether a business is big or small.
K3 can assist with reviewing your policies, setting you up with good practices, and responding to privacy breaches and requests for information at a very competitive price point. Please reach out to one of our team if you have any questions or would like some help.
