Privacy and protection of personal information services

Our practice focuses on all legal issues that impact on privacy and the protection of personal information (POPI or PPI). In the recent past we have built up an extensive body of knowledge and advised a large variety of businesses, both domestic and international, on legal issues. Our activities have included:

• We have recently assessed the impact of POPI (and the CPA) on various organisations, from dual listed multinationals to start-ups. In various industries, including financial services, healthcare, retail, and mining.
• We have successfully done many large projects on IT GRC, information security, and records management. We have also done many IT Legal Audits and many organisations.
• Writing the South African chapter for a Global Privacy Book that has just been published.
• Making representations to the South African Law Commission for several clients on the Data Privacy Issue Paper published for comment in October 2003 and the Data Privacy Discussion Paper published for comment in October 2005 in response to the Protection of Personal Information Bill.
• Conducting Privacy Impact Assessments for several clients.
• Preparing Privacy Policies for several clients.
• Providing legal advice and opinions on various privacy related issues, especially around cross border data flow issues.
• Analysing the various decisions of courts and information commissioners across the world focusing on where companies have been penalised with a view to identifying risk trends which are then used to give an indication of where companies should be focusing their efforts.

We can provide you with a list of selected transactions where we have added value.

Our clients

Our clients include marketers, retailers, financial institutions, health care providers, industry bodies, directory providers, and many others.

The benefits

Our PPI Services will help you to:

1. Identify the sections of the PPI Bill that are relevant to you
2. Determine the impact of the PPI Bill on your business
3. Follow a practical approach to implementing POPI
4. Determine your factual situation by mapping your activities concerning personal information
5. Identify the role players
6. Classify the data subjects
7. Focus on the activities that are critical to your business
8. Prioritise your next steps
9. Fast track your privacy compliance efforts
10. Get clarity on where you are and where you need to be
11. Determine where you currently are with regard to privacy ‘maturity’ when assessed against the PPI Bill
12. Determine the gap between your reality and compliance (usually a gap analysis)
13. Determine whether there is anything you should be doing in preparation for the enactment of the PPI Bill
14. Find solutions to fill the gap – determining what solutions you need
15. Reduce the overall cost of compliance, because you can do much of the work.

Through our PPI Services you either get assurance that you comply or we help you to find solutions to ensure that you comply. We will also point you to material that you can read to get up-to-speed.

Our Services

We provide various services regards privacy and POPI.

Get a proposal from us

For more information or a proposal, please contact privacy@michalsons.com.

Tags: POPI, PPI, Privacy and POPI, protection of personal information act