ELEVEN organisations – among them household names Challenger Technologies, Metro, K BOX Entertainment Group and Singapore Computer Society – have been fined or warned for breaching data protection obligations under the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA).

The enforcement actions were announced on Thursday by the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC), in its first round of decisions on personal data protection since the PDPA came into force in July 2014.

K Box was slapped with the largest financial penalty of S$50,000 for failing to put in place sufficient security measures to protect the personal data of 317,000 members, to have adequate data protection policies or to appoint a data protection officer. Information on its members was found to have been leaked and uploaded on public text storage site pastebin.com in September 2014.

Finantech Holdings, the IT vendor in charge of K Box’s content management system, has been fined S$10,000. As K Box’s data intermediary, Finantech did not “patch security vulnerabilities” in K Box’s IT system which held customers’ personal data. And the password used for its administrator account was “admin”, described as a weak password by PDPC.

The Institution of Engineers Singapore has also been fined S$10,000 for not implementing adequate security measures, which led to the unauthorised disclosure in October 2014 of personal data – contact numbers, passwords etc. – of over 4,000 members. For a similar breach that affected more than 900 customers in September 2014, health supplements supplier Fei Fah Medical Manufacturing was penalised S$5,000.

Warnings were issued to six organisations for lapses in handling personal data, namely Challenger Technologies, its IT vendor Xirlynx Innovations, consumer home show organiser Full House Communications, Metro, Singapore Computer Society and YES Tuition Agency.

Universal Travel Corporation (UTC) has been “issued directions” by the PDPC to improve its personal data protection policies following wrongful disclosure of 37 tour customers’ personal data to four individuals. The directions include having UTC inform the four individuals to not disclose the data to third parties, and send their employees for PDPA training.

The PDPC said on Thursday that it considered the “severity” of non-compliance of the cases to determine the type of enforcement action taken, such as whether the organisation had taken reasonable measures to prevent the data breach, the number of individuals affected or may be affected, and the manner in which the organisation responded to the breach.

PDPC chairman Leong Keng Thai said: “The enforcement actions taken are not to deter the use of personal data for business competitiveness. We recognise that data is essential for innovation in today’s economy.”

He added that the key was to treat personal data as any other “commercially sensitive or valuable” information.

The PDPC has received 667 complaints to-date, of which 34 per cent were resolved through investigations and facilitation between the respective organisations and individuals, and 58 per cent were closed.

John Yong, a senior vice-president at cybersecurity firm Quann, told The Business Times that organisations ought to be aware of their obligations towards safeguarding their clients’ personal data, with or without the PDPA. “This is to prove and to provide confidence that the firm can ensure client data is not misused or abused.”

Challenger, which was issued a warning by the PDPC for its IT vendor’s failure to prevent unauthorised disclosure of its members’ personal data while sending out e-mail, said that it had taken immediate steps to remedy the error. These include terminating the vendor’s services, and hiring Straits Interactive to review its business processes where personal data may come into play.

Said a PDPC spokesman: “Data protection legislation is increasingly seen as a basic in an economy’s legal framework. The lack of a data protection regime potentially hinders the flow of information across borders, and disadvantages Singapore businesses in the global economy.”

This article was first published on April 22, 2016.
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Mr Joshua Peh scrapes off chunks of hair and dirt from bars of used soap into a bowl. Then he slices the “cleaned up” soap into smaller pieces before soaking them in food-safe bleach.

Mr Peh, 24, does this with his peers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) every month.

What they do might come across as disgusting to some people, but to the group of 100 students from NUS’ College of Alice & Peter Tan, it is a meaningful activity.

For the past year, they have been engaged in a project to reconstitute used soap bars from hotels for migrant workers in Singapore.

On April 2, they showcased their project at the annual Community Engagement Festival of College of Alice & Peter Tan, the residential college in University Town.

“This project has been an opportunity for me to learn more about migrant workers as well as see how simple modifications can transform waste into something useful,” said Mr Peh, a third-year student from the college.

To date, more than 1,000 migrant workers have benefited from the Soap for Hope project, an initiative by two lecturers, Ms Sue Chang-Koh and Dr Tan Lai Yong.

Ms Chang-Koh is the college’s associate director for outreach and community engagement, while Dr Tan is the director. The idea came about when they met Mr Stefan Phang last year. Mr Phang is the director for corporate social responsibility of Sealed Air, an international packaging company.

Sealed Air, which has started similar projects for disadvantaged communities in India and Cambodia, shared its experiences with Ms Chang-Koh and Dr Tan. This became the inspiration for Soap for Hope.

Said Ms Chang-Koh: “A 400- room hotel produces 3.5 tonnes of soap waste annually. We wanted to create a project that finds a useful way of utilising this waste that would otherwise be sent to landfills.”

While the idea of recycling used soap is not new here – hotels such as Crowne Plaza Changi Airport, Conrad Centennial Singapore, and Hilton Singapore are doing it themselves to help disadvantaged people in the region – NUS’ project aims to help migrant workers in Singapore.

HealthServe, a charity which provides healthcare assistance to injured migrants and a long-time partner of the college, was chosen to be the beneficiary.

A spokesman for HealthServe said: “The Soap for Hope project has provided an opportunity for our beneficiaries to engage in service work to benefit other migrant workers. We look forward to continuing this project.”

The NUS students get the used soap bars from Sealed Air, which collected them from hotels here such as Hilton and Shangri-La.

The annual operation cost of the project is negligible and it is funded by Sealed Air and the College of Alice & Peter Tan.

Making a 200g soap bar from used soap takes four steps and about five minutes.First, soap bars are scraped of their dirt using knives and then cut up into smaller chunks. These pieces are rinsed in food-safe bleach to get rid of germs.

Essential oils are then added to the soap, and this is followed by a process in which a hand-operated soap press turns the soap into bars.

Soap for Hope has roped in secondary schools and junior colleges, as well as the Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore to help make the soap bars.

It also organises workshops for migrant workers to teach them how to recycle used soap.

Said Mr Peh, who has been organising the workshops: “Being involved in this project changed my view on migrant workers. I used to think of them as out of sight, out of mind, but now I recognise that they have a lot to offer to Singapore.”

The soap bars have received rave reviews from migrant workers – some of them have asked if they could get more of them for other workers in their dormitories.

Mr Fu Jian Sheng, 46, a construction worker from China who has participated in three of the soap- making workshops, said: “I think the project is very meaningful.

“Most of the soap I made went to Bangladeshi workers in my dormitory, who were very thankful.”

This article was first published on April 21, 2016.
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