This week, Arj and Jordan explore the concept of "safe harbour", a legal concept giving board directors a defence from liability from a privacy or cyber incident. With increased penalties recently introduced for privacy breaches and greater scrutiny on boards and executives, we're starting to hear this idea being floated more often. We explore its merits.

We also chat briefly about the Australian Government's new "hack the hackers" gambit and the status of legislation to drastically increase fines for privacy violations.

Links:

Government announces standing operation to disrupt cybercrime (Home Affairs) https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/ClareONeil/Pages/standing-operation-against-cyber-criminal-syndicates.aspx

New privacy penalty bill passes Parliament (InnovationAus) https://www.innovationaus.com/unworkable-data-breach-laws-pass-parliament/

Tech lobby exemptions sought to privacy fines (InnovationAus) https://www.innovationaus.com/tech-industry-wants-good-faith-data-breach-penalty-exemptions/

David Gonski calls for safe harbour (AFR) https://www.afr.com/companies/professional-services/gonski-pushes-for-new-cyber-risk-mechanism-to-protect-directors-20220822-p5bbqe

Lawfirm calls for safe harbour for ransom payments (AFR) https://www.afr.com/technology/making-cyber-ransom-payments-unlawful-would-help-boards-20221120-p5bzp7

Credits:

Music by Bensound.com