When Government Agencies Lose Private Data, It impacts everyone

Nova Scotia is advising over 100,000 victims that their #personalinformation was taken as a result of a “global #cybersecurity issue”, #Ontario recently informed some 360,000 residents about the #breach of their private data, and other provinces are facing similar challenges of #incident detection, impact assessment and #fraud prevention. In all cases, these are predictably followed by the generally weak recommendation for victims to keep monitoring their credit reports to protect themselves against #identityfraud.

Click to read the referenced article: At least 100,000 Nova Scotians affected by cybertheft of government employee files | CBC News

Isn’t it high time every other province and territory followed Quebec’s exemplary lead and updated #consumerprotection laws to empower Canadians to place a #creditfreeze on their #TransUnion and #Equifax credit file before the next embarrassing #databreach and #identitytheft occurs?

(with thanks to Jerry West for having me on CBC/Radio-Canada to discuss the severity of this high #risk problem)

Claudiu Popa is a book collector, author and the co-founder of the Knowledgeflow Foundation, a nonprofit organization that empowers communities to weaponize digital literacy and critical thinking against disinformation. He is also the CEO of Datarisk Canada, one of the first information security companies focused on the protection of intangible assets.