PublicDecisions, the online provider of professional development programs for stakeholder engagement, today announced its February 2010 PublicForum webinar entitled, Stakeholder Privacy Rights & Data Security in the United States and Canada: Protecting Your Organization from Legal and Financial Liability. PublicForum programs feature leading thinkers and practitioners in the field of stakeholder engagement and they serve professionals in such fields as planning, housing, environment, health and education.

Held on Thursday, 4 February at 12pm Eastern / 5pm GMT, this online event is open to the public. Registration is $99 USD for individuals and $159 USD for site registrations, for registrations received through 27 January, a savings of $30 USD over the regular rate. The program is ideal for stakeholder engagement experts, legal staff and IT specialists. Register at http://www.publicdecisions.com/publicforum_2010Feb04.html.

The program features a panel of leading legal and technology experts on privacy rights and data security from the United States and Canada, including Daniel Furst, attorney with MacPherson, Leslie & Tyerman LLP, Calgary, Alberta, Canada (see http://www.mlt.com/people/profiles/furst.htm); Aaron Simpson, attorney with Hunton & Williams, New York, NY, U.S.A. (see http://www.hunton.com/bios/bio.aspx?id=16367) and Aaron Goldwater, CEO at Jurat Software, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (see http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-goldwater/1/47a/336).

Background:
Stakeholder engagement databases have become an invaluable tool for practitioners to track their engagement efforts. Yet hosting this data also means that organizations must take steps to protect this data from falling into the wrong hands and for ensuring privacy rights are honored.

Examples of multimillion-dollar fines for organizations not adequately protecting stakeholder data include a $100,000 USD fine levied on Commonwealth Financial Network by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to a $65 million USD fine of Heartland Payment Systems for a data breach that affected both U.S. and Canadian residents.

If your organization doesn't face a fine as a result of a data breach, you could be the subject of costly litigation by federal or state/provincial authorities. For example, in 2009 TJX paid almost $9 million USD to settle lawsuits with the attorneys general of 41 states. There have also been efforts at class action lawsuits by stakeholders themselves in response to data breaches.

Several individual countries have-or are in the process of-implementing or updating laws and regulations that govern the protection of stakeholder privacy rights and stakeholder personal data that can identify an individual (such as a person's name, combined with an address, phone number or email address, date of birth, etc.). This has become a significant international concern in the light of advances in technology, leading to efforts to develop global privacy standards (see http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gC_3suiQ5PQX2Quq6Bty…)