Data theft scandals in the U.S. and Korea, the recent ratification of privacy laws in Malaysia and Singapore, Canada’s Privacy by Design initiative, Japan’s privacy mark programme and the proposed EU-wide Directive on Data Protection have resulted in personal data protection becoming an issue to contend with for the legal, business and technology communities.

In Malaysia specifically, Feb. 14, 2014 marked the final deadline for data users across the communications, real estate, finance and insurance, healthcare, tourism and hospitality, education, and services and utilities sectors to register with the Personal Data Protection Department (PDPD). Non-compliance with the Personal Data Protection Act from this date onwards will result in severe consequences including fines of up to RM500, 000 (about $80,200) and imprisonment of up to two years.

There is, therefore, an increasing awareness that all legal, technical, HR and information management personnel have to be equally well trained on data protection compliance and ALB’s Data Protection Conference will provide exactly this kind of education to its delegates.

Featuring case studies from Microsoft, Maybank, Shell, Axiata and many more national and multinational organisations, the conference will offer guidance across challenging areas of compliance including notice and disclosure, opt in and out, data retention and access, and cross-border data transfer. In addition to engaging government and private sector experts from Europe, Asia and North America in a dialogue, delegates will have the opportunity to discuss relatively unexplored topics including the optimisation of data protection in employee-vendor relations, mobile advertising, location analytics and social media sharing.

The conference will be held on the June 17 in Kuala Lumpur in partnership with the PDPD, the Data Protection Academy, the Malaysian In-House Counsel Association, the Malaysia Multimedia Development Corp and the International Association of Privacy Professionals. For more information, please go through our website and the event brochure.