Legal Insights

Cyber and Data Resilience

Brendan Coady

• 27 February 2020 • 2 min read

The Australian and global privacy and data landscape has shifted significantly with the introduction of the new European Union privacy regime, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR will apply to organisations, including those in Australia, if they process the personal data of people in the EU and either offer goods or services to people in the EU, monitor the behaviour of people in the EU or have an office in the EU.

The concept of 'cyber resilience' is one that recognises the need for any organisation to plan, be prepared for and recover quickly from a data breach or malicious cyber attack, whatever the cause, source or motive.

Cyber and Data Resilience is not just an IT issue but affects almost all aspects of an organisation's activities. The Maddocks Cyber and Data Resilience team advises clients on all aspects of the cyber resilience life cycle.

"Our aim is to work with our clients to ensure they are Cyber and Data Resilient, whilst being prepared to effectively respond to an attack. We take a 'whole of business' approach, working collaboratively with key stakeholders across business units and helping to embed a high privacy culture within an organisation."

Brendan Coady, Maddocks

We regularly advise on:

regulatory compliance under applicable legislation including the Corporations Act, the Privacy Acts and the Australian Consumer Law. We also assist in understanding how guidance issued by regulators such as Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority give further content to the legislation, including guidance specific to particular industry sectors
information audits and identifying applicable cyber and information security standards and risk assessment frameworks, including the Australian Signals Directorate’s 'Essential Eight', the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s 'Cyber Security Framework', the ISO/IEC 27000 series standards and security controls and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
all facets of cyber-related ICT procurement, including ensuring that the right questions are asked in the approach-to-market phase, vetting supply chains for risk issues, undertaking due diligence on corporate structures and the potential for changes of ownership or control, and drafting and negotiating cloud services agreements
internal policies and procedures and ensuring they are up to date. For example, we can prepare data breach notification plans to assist your organisation to comply with the mandatory data breach laws
development, co-design and/or roll out of education and training materials for your organisation’s staff and key stakeholders in areas such as privacy compliance, cyber and data security legal framework, IT procurement and cloud computing contracting.

Our lawyers take a keen interest in staying at the forefront of Australian government policy and international developments in cyber security, as well as approaches to cyber governance and regulation in South East Asia and the broader Asia-Pacific region.