PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Qatar and the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) have said interest in data privacy in the Middle East and globally continue to grow at a rapid rate.
A seminar on “Beyond GDPR: Data Privacy in Qatar”, examining key principles of data protection, highlighted several key topics on the latest data protection developments both in Qatar and the region as well as understanding the challenges and how to tackle them.
The introduction of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) has already seen many organisations in the region rethink their approach to data privacy.
With the QFC data protection regulations and the state data privacy law, more entities in Qatar need to understand their implications, and how to approach handling personal data. Meeting data privacy compliance requirements is a complex undertaking that many organisations struggle to achieve.
“The participation of so many QFC firms to the event demonstrates that we are fully committed to ensure the protection of personal data and supporting QFC firms to become compliant with local and international regulations,” said Luigia Ingianni, commissioner of the QFC Employment Standards Office.
Philip Mennie, PwC’s Digital Trust Partner, said data privacy compliance is a multi-disciplinary topic and hence it needs a range of skills to build an effective privacy programme including technology, legal, risk management and compliance, IT security.
“Organisations need to recognise data as an asset and promote a privacy conscious culture across their employees to implement an effective privacy programme. Privacy has to be a process fix, enabled through technology,” according to Issa Habash, Other Assurance Services Leader.
QFC and PwC discuss key issues relating to data privacy.
