Joanne

In the week that Singapore will implement its second phase of reopening from the COVID-19 “circuit breaker”, the Chief Executive of the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), Kiat How Tan, discusses with Andrea Millwood Hargrave, IIC’s Director of Regulatory Fora, the measures taken by the IMDA to address the needs of citizens during the pandemic…. [Read More]

Regulatory scrutiny is not affecting the appetite for acquisition Alphabet, Amazon, Google Facebook and Microsoft have announced 19 deals so far this year, reports the Financial Times, the highest rate since 2015. The companies are at or near record valuations, have huge amounts of cash, and are looking to position themselves as the ‘winners of Covid-19’, according to… [Read More]

‘Health passes’ are sought by governments and companies in spite of privacy and immunity concerns Digital identity systems are seen as a key tool in enabling individuals to re-integrate into normal life and start-ups are busy building them, reports the Financial Times. The idea is to link a person’s identity to their coronavirus test results, with those… [Read More]

Breaches on web and cloud applications double Reuters reports on Verizon’s 2020 ‘Data Breach Investigation Report’, which revealed that 86% of data breaches were for money rather than spying. The report studied 32,000 incidents in 81 countries. Read more here.

• New Zealand’s Ministry of Health plans to release a voluntary contact tracing app soon. The Ministry is currently offering voluntary pre-registration to ensure that users of the app submit up-to-date contact details. • New Zealand’s Commerce Commission has released guidance outlining how it will assess business collaboration during the coronavirus epidemic, and police the… [Read More]

Australia launches its COVIDSafe Contact Tracing App, and accompanying draft special legislation designed to protect information collected by the app from misuse. The app has approximately 5.3 million downloads since its launch. For more updates, read here.