70 LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
| DATA PRIVACY |
about 50% from 2016 and more than dou-
ble the 2015 total.
No surprise, then, that an April 2018
Citrix Cloud and Security Survey of
1,505 Canadian residents, found that
almost half (46%) of Canadians are
either "not at all" or not "very secure"
storing family information on the cloud.
Medical information (52%) and financial
information (59%) fare even worse.
It all amounts to fodder for the plain-
tiffs' class action bar. Privacy class actions
have become ever more popular in this
country in the last 10 years. Many engage
more than 1 million consumers and $1 bil-
lion in damages. High-profile defendants
have included Google, Facebook, Equifax,
Yahoo, Walmart, Home Depot, Scotia-
bank, Banque Nationale de Canada, Bell
Canada, Desjardins Group, Ford Motor
Company, DaimlerChrysler, TD Auto
Finance Services, Durham Region Health,
and University of British Columbia.
Although damages can be difficult to
prove, at least one jurisdiction has adopted
a statutory solution. "California has man-
dated statutory damages of $750 per per-
son notified," said Brian Hengesbaugh in
Baker McKenzie LLP's Chicago office. "So
if you're notifying 1 million people, you've
got a big class action on your hands."
From a global perspective, IDG, a multi-
national tech media company, reports that
the damage from global ransomware grew
from $325 million in 2015 to an estimated
$5 billion in 2017. To make matters worse,
news event, like the GDPR [the European
Union's recently enacted General Data
Protection Regulation], or something bad
has happened to them."
HIGHEST DIRECT COST
At press time, the latest federal sector vic-
tim was Air Canada, whose mobile app
was, compromising the personal informa-
tion of some 20,000 users. But many more
were affected: aer noting suspicious activ-
ity in the account a week earlier, the air-
line locked out all 1.7 million subscribers,
who subsequently received instructions to
change their passwords.
While the costs of the Air Canada
breach have not been disclosed by the com-
pany, what is known from the Ponemon
study is that Canada ranks first globally
with the highest direct costs of $81 per
record breached (all figures US), including
legal and forensic costs and identity protec-
tion services. In indirect costs — includ-
ing the expenses and resources involved in
a recent Ponemon Institute, LLC study es-
timates that security breaches are increas-
ing at a rate of 27.4% annually.
"Privacy issues are everywhere," said
Chantal Bernier, formerly Canada's In-
terim Privacy Commissioner and now
counsel in Dentons Canada LLP's Ot-
tawa office. "Even good companies are be-
ing subjected to sophisticated and inces-
sant attacks."
But pervasiveness, it seems, has not been
a clarion call to action for the business
community. A 2017 omson Reuters
(owner of this magazine) study of 1,000
data privacy professionals at companies in
nine countries found that almost half, or
44%, had not complied with data privacy
regulations. Even more respondents, some
47%, advised that they were struggling to
keep up or falling further behind.
"Awareness is up, but preparedness is
flat," says Ira Nishisato in Borden Ladner
Gervais LLP's Toronto office. "We tend to
get a spike from clients only when there's a
CHANTAL BERNIER
DENTONS CANADA LLP
"Privacy issues are
everywhere. Even good
companies are being
subjected to sophisticated
and incessant attacks."
