The uncontrolled data growth urgently requires new corporate policies for data storage and retention. The information regulator is pushing for the remaining provisions of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) to be finalised and come into effect by April 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The chairperson of the\nInformation Regulator, Advocate Pansy Tlakula, has already sent a request to\nPresident Cyril Ramaphosa to bring the outstanding aspects of the POPIA Act\ninto effect. After the commencement date, companies will have 12 months to get\ntheir systems and processes in place to comply with the Act for the processing\nand storing of personal information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Xperien CEO, Wale Arewa, says it\u2019s time to act. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe POPIA will ensure that\ncompanies are responsible when collecting, processing, storing and sharing\npersonal information and once the Act is effective, they will be held\naccountable, \u201che said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe penalties will be harsh;\nlack of compliance will lead to fines of up to R10 million and a jail sentence\nof up to 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDisposing of old computer\nequipment used to be a mindless process, but those methods of the past are no\nlonger an option with the introduction of new laws and regulations. The days of\npiling it up in storage or simply selling it off to staff or second-hand\nretailers or even dumping it in a landfill, are over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New corporate policies for data\nstorage will be required, especially with heaps of hard drives and Solid-State Drives\nlying around storage rooms and data centres. Most of these drives contain\nsensitive data which needs to be protected or permanently removed – or it could\nbe put the company at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More importantly, data at\nend-of-life is a massive challenge for most businesses, big and small. It is\noften assumed that once data has been marked for disposal, it no longer\nrequires much attention. It is essential for data security and the protection\nof personal, proprietary and confidential information that data is permanently\ndestroyed, deleted or erased from devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arewa says simply deleting the\ndata or running a magnet over the old hard drives in an attempt to erase data\nis not sufficient. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEven using the old hard drives\nfor target practice or drilling holes in them will not satisfy the\nprescriptions of the POPIA and nor does a factory reset.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Xperien has a track record in the\nrefurbishment and disposal of old computer equipment in a way that is fully\ncompliant with the POPIA. The safe erasure of data is carried out using\nspecialised tools like Blancco, which is recommended by IT consulting firm\nGartner as one of the most suitable tools for this purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is done either on site or\nremoved under strictly supervised and secure conditions for off-site handling.\nOnce the data is safely erased, the client company is issued with a\nPoPI-compliant certificate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arewa says lessons could be\nlearnt through GDPR compliance that can later be applied to POPI compliance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt might make sense to have one\ncompliance project that covers all bases, POPI and the GDPR alike,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhether businesses plan to do\nthus in-house or through professional IT Asset Disposal (ITAD) provider, it\nneeds to be done rather sooner than later.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The uncontrolled data growth urgently requires new corporate policies for data storage and retention. The information regulator is pushing for the remaining provisions of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) to be finalised and come into effect by April 1. The chairperson of the Information Regulator, Advocate Pansy Tlakula, has already sent a request […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":32063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4950,46,5,399,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-data-centres","category-enterprise-security","category-more-news","category-regional-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32062"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32071,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32062\/revisions\/32071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}