Privacy management – a new era in the Australian business environment

People all over the world are increasingly concerned about the privacy issues surrounding the personal information collected by the governments, private organizations and employers. Privacy relates to issues surrounding collection, secure transmission, storage, authorized access, usage and disclosure of personal information. Australian businesses for the first time will need to comply with the new privacy law coming into effect on 21 December 2001. This paper briefly discusses the privacy and related management issues in the information age in general, and privacy related legal requirements in Australia in particular. It further discusses IT‐centric measures that need to be undertaken for the purposes of compliance of the Act and provides an overview of enabling technology currently available.