Strengthening privacy breach prevention and management
Action plan for the Government of Canada
Click on the sections below to learn more.
Strengthen policies, guidance, and tools
Review existing policy instruments and tools for opportunities to strengthen the prevention, identification, management and reporting of privacy breaches
Collaborate with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Develop an online Privacy Act Breach Reporting Form to facilitate reporting by Government of Canada institutions and clarify the reporting process
Develop tips on how to manage privacy breaches and promote the tips among Government of Canada institutions
Raise awareness
- Develop and distribute materials that departments and agencies can customize and use for privacy awareness activities throughout the year with all of their employees, for example, guides, bulletins, intranet content or emails
- Host events and discussions with the access to information and privacy (ATIP) community on improving management of privacy breaches
- Work with key functional communities, such as the information management (IM) and information technology (IT) community, the security community and the cybersecurity community, to:
- explore options for raising awareness across their membership
- develop targeted materials on preventing and managing privacy breaches
- Identify opportunities to communicate privacy awareness messaging across government
Improve training
- Work with the Canada School of Public Service and others to review and implement changes to privacy awareness courses, including:
- Access to Information and Privacy Fundamentals
- Security Awareness
- Privacy in the Government of Canada
- Develop and distribute training materials on privacy breaches to ATIP, IM/IT, security, and cybersecurity specialists, for example, community-specific presentations, guides, emails or fact sheets
- Identify opportunities to incorporate information about protecting personal information and identifying privacy breaches into courses for non-specialist employees, for example, training for new employees or new managers
Strengthen policies, guidance, and tools
- Work one-on-one with institutions to ensure consistent reporting on privacy breaches in annual reports to Parliament
- Review the following policy instruments:
- Policy on Privacy Protection,
- Directive on Privacy Practices
- Guidelines for Privacy Breaches
- Identify opportunities to strengthen the policy instruments listed above as part of preventing, identifying, managing and reporting privacy breaches
- Update the Privacy Breach Management Toolkit and add to the guidance and support targeted to institutions so that they can prevent, identify, manage and report privacy breaches
- Make new and existing policies, guidance, support materials, and tools easily available on GCTools
Collaborate with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
- Develop an online Privacy Act Breach Reporting Form that will address inconsistencies in reporting by:
- clarifying and streamlining the process for reporting material privacy breaches
- enabling Government of Canada institutions to report material privacy breaches simultaneously to:
- the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
- the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
- Develop tips on how to manage a privacy breach and promote the tips by:
- creating customizable materials that Government of Canada institutions can use to promote internal awareness of privacy breaches, such as bulletin articles, intranet site content and emails
- adding new material to the Privacy Breach Management Toolkit on Canada.ca