Bill 2000 in the next two weeks of sittings. The Bill is the most significant development in the area of Privacy Law in Australia since the passage of the Privacy Act in 1988. It will establish a new approach to the protection and handling of personal information in the private sector. A key aim of the Bill is to encourage businesses that hold information about people to ensure that the information is stored, used and disclosed in a fair and appropriate way. The Standard will support businesses to implement the principles.
Electronic commerce has the potential to be a key factor in Australia s future economic development.
But Government measures alone cannot necessarily protect material that are held in insecure databases. It is imperative that businesses adopt their own rigorous security standards to take full advantage of the benefits e-commerce has to offer Australia. Timeliness A series of recent attacks on major Internet sites in the United States have highlighted the potential vulnerability of information systems. Hackers were able to exploit poor security on a large number of websites and then use those sites to launch their assault on major sites. The targets of the attacks were powerless to defend against them.