The dark side of digitalisation surfaces as the pandemic surges, warned Data Protection Excellence (DPEX) Centre, the learning and research arm of Straits Interactive.
DPEX, which issued the warning on Wednesday Jan. 6, has released its data protection trends report for the year. It has noted that digitalisation, emerging technologies and work-from-home surveillance in the continuing pandemic means more specific privacy breaches in the Philippines and the rest of the ASEAN this 2022.
“Expect to see more sophisticated breaches created by the pandemic situation in 2022 – whether it involves a data breach in a contact tracing app, unauthorised use of COVID-19-related personal data, or via the use of new privacy-intrusive technologies to profile or perform surveillance of individuals,” said Kevin Shepherdson, CEO of Straits Interactive.
The report said digitalisation and surveillance efforts will continue at government and organisation levels due to the global impact of the Omicron variant. However, this will create more privacy issues and breaches, the DPEX report underscored.
Verifying and monitoring vaccinated individuals and those with COVID-19 for a legitimate purpose will affect the privacy of individuals.
Privacy breaches is inevitable with the contact tracing requirements through vaccinated travel lanes, including mandatory requirements to download contract tracing mobile apps at travel destinations, according to the report. Worse, the digitalisation and transformational activities of companies have little regard to security and privacy requirements at the design level.
In addition, due to continued lockdowns and work-from-home requirements, DPEX Centre expects continued breaches of data protection laws.
Spamming activities from companies will increase because the software for monitoring employees are more prevalent.
Companies are resorting to new intrusive technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), especially in mobile apps. Hence, cyberattacks will proliferate, along with identity theft and phishing, involving sophisticated technologies, such as deepfakes.