TASMANIAN business owners and consumers are urged to take part in an online survey that will assess their knowledge about privacy data breach laws and online security awareness.
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Changes to national privacy laws in 2017 saw the introduction of the Notification Data Breach scheme, which forces businesses to report data hacks within 30 days.
Businesses earning $3 million or more, and all health providers including psychologists and dentists, must now report data security breaches and notify consumers, or risk fines of up to $1.8 million, or compensation claims in the thousands.
University of Tasmania technology lecturer Joel Scanlan said the survey would discover whether businesses knew about their legal obligations, and what knowledge Tasmanians had about personal data security.
He said the results would be used to call for targeted government educational campaigns around online security and its laws.
“Our expectation is that consumers have no idea about the legislation and that some businesses will know and others won’t,” Mr Scanlan said.
“There hasn’t been any education surrounding these changes so we expect that smaller businesses on the threshold won’t know about the responsibilities placed on them if data hacks occur, and won’t know about the substantial fines if they don’t report.”
Mr Scanlan said notifications of online data hacks were expected to rise, but many consumers would not know what to do in the event of a breach.
“We might find, for example, that the over 40 age group are terrible at online security,” he said.
“We may also find that health providers are already up to date, but other organisations such as real estate agencies might not be, so the we call on that body educate their members.”
The survey will ask questions relating to security such as “how would you describe your level of Information Communication Technology security awareness” and “do you assess the safety of websites before entering information”.
It also assesses online use such as “I don’t post anything on social media before considering any negative consequences”, and “if an email from an unknown sender looks interesting, I click on a link within it”.
The 10 to 20 minute survey can be completed online at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MFJJVSB.
