INDUSTRY WATCH
Importance of Protection of Personal Information Act
Nicol Myburgh, Head: HR Services, CRS Technologies
Waiting until you are on the wrong side of the Protection of Personal Information Act, POPIA before acting is a risk no business can afford. Beyond the threat of hefty fines or legal consequences, there is the potential for serious reputational damage, that is far harder to recover from.
Being proactive about POPIA compliance is more cost-effective and far less stressful than trying to manage the aftermath of a data breach. When data protection is built into your daily operations, you are not only protecting your business, but also building trust with your stakeholders and reinforcing your credibility in an increasingly privacy-conscious world.
Compliance with POPIA plays a central role in this. The Act is designed to uphold individuals’ right to privacy and outlines clear rules around how personal data, whether it belongs to employees, clients or suppliers, should be collected, processed, stored and shared. Failure to comply with these requirements could result in significant fines and even jail time of up to ten years.
Yet despite the clear risks, some businesses still treat POPIA as a simple checkbox exercise. When privacy is treated as a business priority rather than a regulatory burden, it becomes a powerful tool that can help improve internal processes, increase transparency and give your organisation a competitive edge.
What does a POPIA-aligned security strategy look like in practice?
It starts with putting data protection at the centre of your operations. This means understanding what personal information you collect, why you collect it, how it is used and where it is stored. From there, you need to implement the right safeguards like encryption, secure access controls, firewalls and regular system checks to protect it. These controls should be reviewed and updated regularly to stay ahead of evolving risks.
It is also important to appoint an information officer. This person plays a critical role in making sure your policies are clear, that consent is responsibly managed and that your data remains accurate and up to date. Additionally, regular audits help keep everything on track, while having a clear breach response plan means you are ready to act quickly if something goes wrong.
Employee training is key. When your team understands the importance of data privacy and their role in protecting it, you create a culture of accountability. Individuals should also be empowered to manage their own data, with clear processes in place for accessing, updating or deleting personal information. transformation capabilities before carefully and methodically importing the data.
We are likely to see a continued acceleration of business support system modernisation across Africa, as telcos seek systems that will support IoT, 5G and other advanced services.
Much like we see in mobile money and fintech, telcos in Africa have a real opportunity to catch up to, and even leapfrog, their counterparts in developed markets by skipping traditional, intermediate steps, precisely because of the agility and capabilities that API-led connectivity and cloud-based microservices enable. p
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