New privacy obligations on the horizon for Australian small businesses

Many of us can’t wait to re-open the doors to our businesses again! 🏪🏬🏤

Lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions have made running a small business even harder than usual, particularly for those that rely on a physical location. While the chaos and confusion of 2020 is largely behind us now, with QR codes on every shop front and contactless payments the norm, new obligations around checking vaccine status are likely to see many scrambling again as they rush to re-open.

‘Vaccine passports’ are planned to become the new tool for publicly checking someone’s vaccination status, allowing customer access to stores or locations that require being fully vaccinated. State government plans appear at this stage to make it the business’ duty to check vaccination records of customers before they’re allowed into the store. 

But what if happens if the Internet goes out or someone asks you to prove you’ve been checking customers?What cyber security and privacy obligations does this create for small businesses?

Whenever you’re handling an individual’s data, you should do so carefully. Especially now during COVID, where private data is starting to become more and more accessible to businesses, it’s important that your entire team handles it appropriately. Your clients’ trust is in your hands and it is your responsibility to repect that trust, especially in times like these where the situation is constantly changing. 

With new COVID-19 regulations, business owners like yourself might be faced with new responsibilities and obligations. So it’s best to start now and improve your security the best you can ASAP. 🙌

A great place to start is setting up policies and practices for securing and handling personal data. Your team members should be informed of data handling practices and be aware of what not to do with clients’ personal information (i.e. don’t take a selfie with a client’s medicare number in clear sight). 

Keep up with the times and be mindful that new regulations are coming. The pandemic has changed all of our lives, and among the many other things it’s changed, it also has an influence on the importance of sharing private data. So stay up-to-date and protect your clients’ data in every way you can!

If you are unsure how to do so, you can reach out to us at Cynch and we’ll help you develop the policies and guidelines that will keep you protected even when things go wrong. We’ll show you how you can protect the data your handling and what you could (and probably should) do when data needs to be disposed of.

You can start your own Cynch membership today and check out the variety of tools and documents we have tailored to your small business’ needs!🛠📒

Set up strong privacy and security policies today to stay ahead of the ever-changing face of cyber security!