PublicDecisions, the online provider of professional development programs for stakeholder engagement, today announced its February 2010 PublicForum webinar entitled, Stakeholder Privacy Protection & Data Security in the United States and Canada: Protecting Your Organization from Legal and Financial Liability. PublicForum programs feature leading thinkers and practitioners in the field of stakeholder engagement and they serve professionals in such fields as planning, housing, environment, health and education.

Held on Friday, 19 February at 12:30pm Eastern / 5:30pm GMT, this online event is open to the public. Registration is $99 USD for individuals and $159 USD for site registrations; members of the PublicDecisions Circle Club receive 50% off (join the Circle Club by clicking here http://tinyurl.com/ydgo784; you'll receive a discount code in your confirmation email).

The program is ideal for organizations who work with stakeholders and track such data, including planners, stakeholder engagement experts, legal staff and IT specialists. Register at http://www.publicdecisions.com/publicforum_2010Feb04.html.

The February 19th webinar will highlight what organizations need to know to be in compliance with existing Canadian and U.S. privacy protection and data security laws and regulations, as well as information about pending laws and regulations in this critical subject area. For example, the province of Alberta recently updated its Personal Information Protection Act.

The program features a panel of leading legal and technology experts on privacy and data security from the United States and Canada, including
* Daniel Furst, attorney with MacPherson, Leslie & Tyerman LLP, Calgary, Alberta, Canada (see http://www.mlt.com/people/profiles/furst.htm);
* Aaron Simpson, attorney with Hunton & Williams, New York, NY, U.S.A. (see http://www.hunton.com/bios/bio.aspx?id=16367) and
* Aaron Goldwater, CEO at Jurat Software, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (see http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-goldwater/1/47a/336).

Background:
Stakeholder engagement databases have become an invaluable tool for practitioners to track their engagement efforts. Yet hosting this data also means that organizations must take steps to protect this data from falling into the wrong hands and for ensuring privacy is protected.

Examples of multimillion-dollar fines for organizations not adequately protecting stakeholder data include a $100,000 USD fine levied on Commonwealth Financial Network by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to a $65 million USD fine of Heartland Payment Systems for a data breach that affected both U.S. and Canadian residents.

If your organization doesn't face a fine as a result of a data breach, you could be the subject of costly litigation by federal or state/provincial authorities. For example, in 2009 TJX paid almost $9 million USD to settle lawsuits with the attorneys general of 41 states. There have also been efforts at class action lawsuits by stakeholders themselves in response to data breaches.

Several individual countries have-or are in the process of-implementing or updating laws and regulations that govern the protection of stakeholder privacy rights and stakeholder personal data that can identify an individual (such as a person's name, address, phone number or email address, date of birth, etc.).

In Canada, there are federal and provincial laws (see http://www.priv.gc.ca/index_e.cfm) governing private sector privacy protection.

In the United States, the Senate is at work on two bills governing personal data security that seek to create federal standards for data protection and data loss reporting (see http://www.gcn.com/Articles/2009/11/06/Evolving-data-security-threats-S…). Other pending bills can be seen here: http://www.databreaches.net/?page_id=73.

Failure to comply with these privacy and data security guidelines and failure to take appropriate precautions to secure personal data can expose your organization to litigation or significant fines.

You will learn about the issues involved, how to reasonably secure data, terms used by vendors and what they really mean and what you need to know to most effectively protect stakeholders' personal information and your organization in light of these emerging requirements.

Contact: Beth Offenbacker, beth@publicdecisions,com, 571 303 9208 (U.S.)

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