THE UAE’S DATA PROTECTION LAW NO. 45 OF 2021 (DP LAW) - REGULATE THE PROCESSING OF PERSONAL DATA IN THE UAE

The Data Protection Law came into effect March 2nd 2022. Data protection laws in the UAE are not new for some organisation as specific sectors such as financial and healthcare has laws already in place by the regulatory bodies of those sectors.

Globally there are laws like the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations), which have been around for some time, and have set the standard for many countries looking to adopt the privacy and data of their people.

The laws will be welcomed by the public, and organisations need to act to ensure their compliance. This included how it stores, where it stores and how it shares their data.

There are several factors to enact in an organisation for it to be compliant.

  • Policies and protocols for its sensitive data, such as location of that data, show how it is shared internally and externally and documenting the consent of the person's data and how it will be used.
  • Securing your IT Systems is critical to ensure you do not suffer a data breach. A data breach will impact your business in several ways, such as reputation damage, downtime to operations, and pose a risk of financial loss and/or penalties, which can be mitigated if you can demonstrate good practices. Failure to demonstrate best practice can lead to larger penalties.
  • Training your staff on the policies and regulations. The best policy in the world won’t work if your employees don’t understand or follow these.
  • Cyber awareness training for employees. Phishing and email attacks are reported to be the most common type of attack, whilst IT systems can be used to mitigate these, no one system is 100% foolproof as the threats emerge daily and change. Turning your staff into a line of defence is critical to safeguarding your data and business.
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Who does the Law apply to?

There are two roles that companies can be in in any data protection regulation and often can be both. A data controller is a person or entity that processes personal data and the purpose for the purposes of business, for example, a Real Estate company dealing with the sale and purchases of a property, whilst hold data on any individual and will process that data as part of its organisation’s objectives.The processor processes the personal data on behalf of, under the direction of and in accordance with the instructions of the controller. This could also be the same Real Estate company who receives data from another real estate company in the transaction of that property. So, an organisation can be one of these or even both of the roles.

Personal data covers any data of a natural person identified directly or indirectly by linking data. It covers, without limitation, name, voice, picture, identification number, electronic identifier, geographical location or one or more of the natural person’s medical, economic, cultural and includes sensitive personal data.

Sensitive personal data covers data that directly or indirectly reveals the ethnicity, political or religious beliefs, criminal record, biometric data and any data relating to a person’s health.

Does the Data Protection Law include data subject access rights?

Yes. The Law has identified a list of information that a person/subject can request from a data controller. The data controller can, in limited circumstances, reject a request, for example, where the information is not covered under the Law, where the request is overly repetitive, conflicts with judicial procedures or investigations could adversely impact the data controller’s information security efforts or affects the privacy and confidentiality of others’ personal data.

What does the data protection impact assessments cover?

Data Controllers are required to assess processing operations that utilise technology that could pose a high risk to the privacy of personal data. Assessments will be required where automated processing of data is used, such as profiling, or should large volumes of sensitive personal data be processed. The DPO (Data Protection Officer) will be responsible for overseeing these assessments.

What is the Data Office?

The Data Office will be a separate government organisation and the Data Office objectives are to ensure the protection of Personal Data and is affiliated with the Cabinet. The Data Office is responsible for:

  • legislation and policies for data protection
  • handling of data subject complaints and compensation
  • identifying and proposing standards for the monitoring of the data protection law
  • issuing guidance for the implementation of data protection law
  • imposing penalties

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