The Nigeria Information Safety Fee (NDPC) has mentioned it could begin imposing heavy fines in opposition to companies which are dealing with Nigerians’ knowledge in any other case known as knowledge controllers and knowledge processors, beginning this 12 months.
The Nationwide Commissioner of the Fee, Dr. Vincent Olatunji, disclosed this in his outlook for the 12 months.
In response to him, NDPC up till now has not fined any firm however that may begin this 12 months because it begins huge enforcement of the Nigeria Information Safety Act (NDPA).
“For knowledge controllers and processors, there may be going to be huge enforcement in 2025. We’ve got by no means issued any fines, however going ahead you’ll hear us issuing heavy penalties,” Olatunji said.
Information safety jobs
Whereas noting that the Fee would start the second section of its 2023-2027 Roadmap this 12 months, Olatunji mentioned the NDPC would even be creating jobs via knowledge safety consultants it educated final 12 months.
- In response to him, Nigerians will in 2025 begin seeing the results of the consultants, professionals, and a pool of worldwide competing human capital that the NDPC has been making an attempt to develop within the knowledge safety ecosystem, which might result in job creation.
- He added that the Fee would additionally proceed knowledge safety consciousness throughout the nation to make sure that Nigerians are conscious of their rights.
“There are lots of knowledge controllers and processors which are on the lookout for folks to work with them.
“Now people who we’ve got educated in 2024, these we’ve got licensed, we’re going to do extra this 12 months to truly launch them to the job market the place they’ll actually work with knowledge controllers and processors,” the Commissioner mentioned.
Registration and audit return
Forward of this 12 months’s enforcement plan, the NDPC Commissioner at a discussion board in Lagos in 2023 introduced the timeline for the registration of all knowledge controllers and processors, which embrace all organizations that cope with folks’s knowledge akin to banks, telecom operators, insurance coverage corporations, colleges, amongst others.
“What we’ve got within the regulation is that every one knowledge controllers and processors and there are over 500,000 in Nigeria, that they need to register with the information safety authority.
“What the regulation says is that we should always give them six months to acquaint themselves with the provisions of the regulation.
“And that’s the reason finishing up consciousness throughout the nation, we’re going to do one other one in Abuja very quickly. The information controllers have to register with us as a result of you’ll be able to’t rely them in case you don’t know them. So, we have to have a quantity, after which these which are captured might be monitored to see how they’re managing the information of their care and we are able to regulate them appropriately.
“So, between now and December 31, they’re to register with the fee. And from the primary of January to thirty first of March subsequent 12 months (2024), they’re to submit their annual audit report, telling us what they’ve accomplished within the space of setting up measures to safeguard our knowledge with them.”
What you must know
President Bola Tinubu signed the nation’s Information Safety Invoice into regulation on June 12, 2023.
- That reworked the present Nationwide Information Safety Bureau headed by Olatunji right into a Fee saddled with the obligations of driving the implementation of the regulation.
- Globally, the enforcement of knowledge safety grew to become a serious subject final 12 months with a number of knowledge safety watchdogs, particularly within the EU nations imposing heavy fines on multinationals for breaching knowledge safety legal guidelines.
- Social media platforms akin to Meta, LinkedIn, and TikTok, amongst others have been on the receiving finish of knowledge safety sanctions in 2024.
Be First to Comment