Data

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We have seen a market driven push for companies to embrace diversity and inclusion (D&I) policies over the last few years, which reflects a key shift in social and cultural norms for many organisations. Increasingly, consumers, staff and senior business leaders expect proactive steps to be taken for D&I objectives. Research demonstrates a strong business case for promoting diversity, although some suggest that viewing it through a lens of fairness is more effective. Regardless of the rationale, there are very sound reasons for companies to be embracing a diverse and inclusive workforce.

In pursuit of this objective, global businesses might assume that diversity reporting obligations apply in Australia in the same way they do in other jurisdictions and that overseas policies will be suitable for use here. With the best of intentions, following guidance from reputable external organisations focussed on general strategies to promote D&I, businesses might default to policies and practices designed overseas.

So what’s the problem? Many companies are unaware of the local compliance issues in Australia that need to be met when collecting diversity data and implementing these programs:Continue Reading When Good Intentions Fail: Is Your D&I Policy Inadvertently Unlawful?

In his “Data Is a Toxic Asset” blog post, Bruce Schneier argues that data is a toxic asset and that the lesson all the recent data breaches are teaching us is that storing this asset is “dangerous,” because it makes companies vulnerable to hackers, the government, and employee error. Schneier suggests addressing data breaches through stronger regulation at every stage of the data lifecycle and through personal liability of corporate executives. “Data is a toxic asset,” concludes Schneier, “We need to start thinking about it as such, and treat it as we would any other source of toxicity. To do anything else is to risk our security and privacy.”

Calling data a “toxic asset” sensationalizes the data-security conversation into alarmist territory. The term “toxic asset” has a certain meaning in financial circles and typically refers to assets that become illiquid when they no longer can be sold on a secondary market. This hardly applies to data, which is more of a lifeblood for corporations than toxic asset.
Continue Reading Is Data Really a “Toxic” Asset?