NPC calls for better online privacy during GCQ

MANILA, Philippines — The National Privacy Commission on Friday urged better protection against growing attempts of online phishing and breaching of walls that defend sensitive personal data on the Internet.

NPC Commissioner Raymund Enriquez Liboro spoke in the 3rd National Data Privacy Conference to some 2,000 online participants on how organizations could best navigate during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure that the privacy of personal data.

“Many of the coping and mitigation measures to deal with the pandemic involve the use of personal data,” said Liboro. “While some aspects of data processing may have changed due to the state of public crisis, the basic remains same — people’s sense of trust that their data is in good hands will largely determine our level of success with those measures.”

Princess Lou Ascalon of IBM Philippines said in the conference that data privacy had become a priority during the lockdown since consumers had turned to online shopping for their needs.

Gelalyn Boquiren, the data protection officer of San Miguel Corp., observed, though, that the retail-to-customer cycle had become more digital and more secure.

“Data privacy has never been more important than today for consumers and businesses,” said Ascalon.

EastWest Bank DPO Manuel Joy Regala said, however,  that DPOs should be better equipped in combatting hackers and that normal consumers should also be knowledgeable of the current threats and phishing attacks.

Regala said that to better protect one’s data online consumers should have a secured Wi-Fi connection and a virtual private network that would hide their location, as well as multifactor authentication, hard disk encryption, and data-leak and advanced-threat protection.

/atm