Confident Women Leaders – 10 Key Steps To Prevent A Privacy Breach

Posted on October 22, 2019 by Jean Eaton in Blog

It only takes a little time and effort now to dramatically reduce the likelihood of a privacy breach in the future.

Recently, I was a guest on Confident Women Leaders Community Facebook Live hosted by Kathy Archer, Leadership Development Coach with Silver River Coaching.

It was a lot of fun to talk with Kathy about how small business, not-for-profit organizations, and clubs can quickly and easily build in privacy with their employees and volunteers as part of good business practices.

Practical Privacy Tips

We talked about the 3 simple practical tips every organization can use to prevent a privacy breach. This works for every type of organization.

Tip #1: Create an inventory of the personal information that your organization collects and is now responsible to keep confidential and secure.

Know what you collect, and review the reason why you collect the information. Make sure that you collect the least amount of information on a need to know basis at the highest level of anonymity. Use the inventory like a library account – keep track of who has access to the information, and when it is returned.

Tip #2: Create a checklist for the orientation of each new employee and volunteer that clearly tells them of your organizations expectations about how they will keep volunteer, employee, client, and donor personal information private, confidential, and secure.

Name a privacy officer in your organization and make sure everyone knows who this is. Make sure to train and support your privacy officer so that they can do a good job for you.

You can use the 10 Key Steps To Prevent A Privacy Breach Checklist as part of your orientation package.

Tip #3: Make it easy for volunteers and employees to keep information confidential and secure.

It’s not always about technology.

You can manage personal information on paper. Or, you could use private shared computer networks for your authorized users, like board directors and managers, to access all of their organization business records.

Here’s an example of a breach in a social service agency who did not properly secure board minutes containing confidential information on a computer server and faced a $25 million lawsuit.

Join Kathy's Private Community of Women Leaders to watch the Facebook Live replay (available for a limited time!) You can take these easy to implement steps to protect your clubs, healthcare practices, and small businesses from errors, omissions or attacks that could result in complaints, fines and even jail time!

I've put together a checklist for you about the 10 Key Steps To Prevent A Privacy Breach.

Download the checklist and make sure that you implement these best practices in your business.

Confident Women Leaders Community

Confident Women Leaders Community with Kathy Archer is ongoing training for women leaders in Canada’s non-profit organizations.

Leaders often hit a point where they find themselves in over their heads and wondering if they have what it takes to lead. Maybe that is where you are at now! Know you are not alone!

As a Leadership Development Coach and Leader of the Confident Women Leader’s Community Kathy Archer is here to provide you with guidance, support, information and a big hug when you need it!

But it’s not just me. We are all in this together!

CONNECT WITH Kathy Archer
https://www.silverrivercoaching.com/

confident, Kathy Archer, leaders, privacy breach, Silver River Coaching, women

Meeting Leadership Podcast – Why Leaders Should Understand Privacy

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Jean Eaton in Blog

I'm tickled pink to be a guest on the 5 minute podcast with Gord Sheppard!

Meeting Leadership Podcast – Learn How To Become An Outstanding Leader Who Runs Highly Effective Meetings

On the podcast, we talked about What Leaders Need To Know To Start a Privacy Program.

Here’s a summary of our discussion.

Train Your Team About Privacy And Security

You must train your team about privacy and security in your practices.

Let me use an example. A business in Alberta had a privacy program in place in 2013. In 2018 they experienced a privacy breach where an employee was snooping and got caught. When the Commissioner's office did the investigation, nobody in that practice, nobody in that business could find the policies and procedures that they had in place in 2013. The staff told the investigator that they hadn't received any training since that time. (See the article, “Do You Know Where Your Policies Are?”)

We need to make sure that we're providing privacy and security training on a regular basis, not just on orientation. You need to keep privacy and security top of mind.

Privacy Is An Investment That Will Save You Money

Privacy awareness training and proper policies and procedures is an investment and it is part of your operating costs. It will also save you time and money by avoiding re-work and re-training. When you have good policies and procedures in place and you're making the right decisions, you're avoiding all sorts of other costs about fines, a bad reputation, poor customer service. When you build that into your practice, you're going to reap the rewards about having an efficient practice and making sure that you're meeting all those requirements.

The Benefits Of Naming a Privacy Officer

Every business needs to have a privacy officer in your organization. This is somebody that you have assigned with the responsibility to make sure that there's a privacy management program in place. Now, not all privacy officers need to know everything. They do need to know those important questions and they need to know how to make it practical for your business.

Stay tuned for an announcement about the new course, The Practical Privacy Officer starting in September.

When You Understand Privacy, You Make Better Business Decisions!

When you have good privacy practices in your business, you will make sure to also select the best vendors who can work with you that also demonstrate their knowledge and support about privacy practices. You can build privacy practices into your business contracts and your agreements. This will also help you to grow your business reputation and attract better business partners and business suppliers and better clients and customers for your organization.

I've put together a checklist for you about the 10 Key Steps To Prevent A Privacy Breach.

Download the checklist and make sure that you implement these best practices in your business.

Meeting Leadership Podcast

Learn How To Become An Outstanding Leader Who Runs Highly Effective Meetings – Daily Episodes – in just 5 minutes!

Poor communication is bad for business. At Meeting Leadership Inc. we take a unique approach to helping you learn how to communicate more effectively. First we help you turn your meetings into highly productive events that drive your organization strategy. Then we empower you with the ability to use online education to tell your story to the most important people in your world.

Check out the Meeting Leadership Podcast here!

leaders, Meeting Leadership Podcast, privacy breach, privacy management, privacy officer, privacy officer training, privacy program

Meeting Leadership Podcast – Why Leaders Should Understand Privacy

Posted on July 26, 2019 by Jean Eaton in Blog

I'm tickled pink to be a guest on the 5 minute podcast with Gord Sheppard!

Meeting Leadership Podcast – Learn How To Become An Outstanding Leader Who Runs Highly Effective Meetings

On the podcast, we talked about Why Leaders Should Understand Privacy.

Here’s a summary of our discussion.

Privacy is Good For Business!

Privacy applies to every leader in every business. We each have personal information in our businesses. It might be information about our employees, our volunteers, or our directors. It might be information about clients and customers, our business partners, and our business suppliers. We each have sensitive information about our business.

When leaders understand privacy, you have privacy practices in place including good written policies and procedures about how you will collect, use, and disclose personal information you will be able to make sure that you are meeting regulatory compliance. Written policies and procedures makes it easy to consistently onboard employees and volunteers in a consistent way to confidently and properly manage personal information in your business.

Avoid Fines, Penalties, Charges, Time-Sucking Notification Process and Even Jail!

When you have written policies and procedures in place and you provide privacy awareness training to your staff, you can avoid fines, penalties, charges, and time sucking notification process and even jail time!

We've seen recently in the Desjardins data breach in July 2019 where an employee–somebody that was trusted within that organization—who had access to client banking and financial information improperly used that information for their financial gain. This included access to client’s name, address, date of birth, and the social insurance number and other really sensitive financial information. Apparently, because this employee wasn't happy with where they worked, they shared sensitive personal information inappropriately. This breach has affected tens of thousands of clients and individuals in Canada and it's being talked about in emergency session of parliament.

This is an absolute financial disaster for any large business because you know immediately just the marketing goodwill impact alone it takes what a million years to build up your business in an hour to tear it down in this kind of thing.

But maybe it's even more important for the smaller business. That one privacy breach is going to have a huge impact the amount of time and reputation of your business. If you also receive a fine of, say, $200,000, well I don't know many small businesses that can absorb that in a business financial cycle.

When You Understand Privacy, You Make Better Business Decisions!

When you have good privacy practices in your business, you will make sure to also select the best vendors who can work with you that also demonstrate their knowledge and support about privacy practices. You can build privacy practices into your business contracts and your agreements. This will also help you to grow your business reputation and attract better business partners and business suppliers and better clients and customers for your organization.

I've put together a checklist for you about the 10 key steps to prevent a privacy breach.

Download the checklist and make sure that you implement these best practices in your business.

Meeting Leadership Podcast

Learn How To Become An Outstanding Leader Who Runs Highly Effective Meetings – Daily Episodes – in just 5 minutes!

Poor communication is bad for business. At Meeting Leadership Inc. we take a unique approach to helping you learn how to communicate more effectively. First we help you turn your meetings into highly productive events that drive your organization strategy. Then we empower you with the ability to use online education to tell your story to the most important people in your world.

Check out the Meeting Leadership Podcast here!

Desjardins, leaders, Meeting Leadership Podcast, privacy breach, privacy management