DPO or Data Protection Officer, is the coveted corporate position that many professionals are after at this point of time. Every country wants to introduce a law to protect the Privacy of their citizens through a data protection regime. Along with the data protection law comes the need for compliance and under a threat of heavy fines.
This has generated a new senior corporate position of the DPO who is responsible for the compliance of the law in the organization that may be called a Data Controller, Data Processor or Data Fiduciary or by any other name.
DPOs are executives who have to monitor the data processing activities of the organization carried out by the technology team, sold by the business team and secured presently by the Information Security team and provide advise on how it should not be done. With the threat of large penalties for non compliance hanging like a Damocles sword, no CEO or the Board can ignore the need to identify and designate a competent person to hold the position which comes with a legal empowerment to supervise the activities of the CTO, CISO, CMO etc
With the Indian Personal Data Protection Act around the corner, GDPR, CCPA, Singapore PDPA, DIFC-DPA etc already in place, there is a scramble for appropriately skilled manpower to hold the important position of DPO in many organizations.
While Naavi has been urging the community to understand the Personal Data Protection and be ready before the bill becomes the law, complacency in some parts of the industry continued and many preferred to wait for the law to be enacted before getting prepared.
Now as some organizations are looking out for recruiting the right candidates, there is a likely hood of these laggards losing opportunities to other swift movers who have already taken steps to acquire relevant skills.
The manpower agencies are finding it difficult to put together a proper job specification because there is lack of understanding of the requirements even amongst them. As a result, reputed organizations are trying to recruit DPOs in India without even recognizing that the knowledge of Indian regulation for data protection (as it exists today in the form of ITA 2000 and as is emerging in the form of PDPA) is of paramount importance for such candidates.
Many prospective candidates are rushing to read the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 now after seeing an advertisement for DPO recruitment so that they can at least try to attend the interview and take their chance.
While Naavi along with Cyber Law College and Foundation of Data Protection Professionals (FDPPI) is conducting in depth training programs leading to “Certified Data Protection Professionals”, from last December, there are many who have started running now to catch the bus of opportunity which has already started moving.
To ensure that such of those people who are making their last minute efforts to prepare for their DPO interviews, Cyber Law College has created a ” Certified DPO Foundation” Program.
The program will cover a gist of Indian and Global data protection laws, Relevant Technology aspects, Data Audit aspects and Behavioural Skills all of which are relevant for an effective DPO.
This program for Aspiring DPOs will be conducted by Naavi through web interactions. The program will be specifically tuned for the requirement of different aspirants and may run for 3-5 hours.
This would be a unique program for those professionals who are trying to catch up with an opportunity before it is too late. It will involve Counselling as well as transfer of key knowledge elements with problem solving skills to mentally prepare the aspirants for the responsibilities of a DPO.
Interested persons can contact Naavi for more details.
Naavi
