Improving the secure management of personal data: Privacy on-line IS important, but it's not easy

This article introduces the growing importance of privacy and the need for an improved understanding of the issues involved. A key requirement is for organisations to better understand the relationship between security and privacy and, therefore, to ensure the design of their systems includes the ability to safeguard privacy and staff consistently apply controls that include the protection of individuals' personal data. A new approach to information security is proposed, as well as some outline results of the application of new methods and mechanisms for ensuring privacy in multi-agency data sharing. It is hoped that this article will prompt dialogue about the need to reconsider existing methods and tools for securely managing data.