Privacy and data protection assessment | information technology

The Department of Administrative Services (DAS) provides a number of services to other departments in an Australian State Government. These services include HR and personnel management, payroll, contract tendering management, contractor management, and procurement. These services have all been provided from the Department’s own data centres.

As a result of a change in Government policy, DAS is moving to a “Shared Services” approach. This approach will mean that DAS will centralise a number of services for the whole of Government (WofG). The result of this move will be that each Department or Agency that runs one of these services for its own users, will be required to migrate its data to DAS so that it can be consolidated into one of the DAS centralised databases. DAS will then provide these consolidated services to all other Departments and Agencies within the Government.

Another Government policy mandates a “Cloud first” approach to the process of updating or acquiring software or services. Following these strategic policy changes from Government, DAS has decided to:

• Purchase a HR and personnel management application from a US based company that provides a SaaS solution. 
  • The application will provide DAS with a HR suite that will provide a complete HR suite which will also include performance management. The application provider has advised that the company’s main database is located in a Cloud datacentre based in California in the United States, with a replica database located in a cloud datacentre in Dublin, Ireland. However, all data processing, configuration, maintenance, updates and feature releases are provided from the application provider’s processing centre in Bangalore, India.
  • Employee data will be uploaded from DAS daily at 12:00 AEST. This will be initially transferred to Bangalore in India for processing before being loaded into the main provider database in California.
  • Employees will be able to access their HR and Performance Management information through a link placed on the DAS intranet. Each employee will use their internal agency digital ID to authenticate to the HR and Performance management system. The internal digital ID is generated by each agency’s Active Directory instance and is used for internal authentication and authorisation.
• Move the DAS payroll to a COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) application that it will manage in a public cloud;

Tasks 

After your successful engagement to provide a security and privacy risk assessment for the DAS, you have again been engaged to consider some additional questions that DAS management has raised. 

Prepare a presentation for DAS Management using the TRA you recently completed on the security and privacy of employee data. Your presentation is to show:

1. Discuss how the operational solution using an SaaS application, and the location(s) of the SaaS provider for HR management may affect the security posture of DAS. (20 marks)
2. Explain if either the operational solution, or the operational location(s), or both, increase or mitigate the threats and risks identified for the security and privacy of employee data? (20 marks)
3. Discuss the security and privacy implications for DAS of the data processing location? (20 marks)
4. Discuss any issues of data sensitivity that you think should be considered with either the chosen solution or the storage/processing locations? (20 marks)
5. Discuss any issues of data sovereignty that should be considered? (20 marks)

Your presentation is to be completed in either PowerPoint or Google slides. Your presentation must not exceed 25 slides of content. 

• The presentation should be a maximum of 25 slides, including introduction, conclusions and recommendations.
• Each slide should have speaking notes in the Notes section which expand on the information in the slide.
• Images and quotations used in slides must be referenced on that slide.
• The slide deck does require a reference list. References are to be included on a Reference list slide(s), but these are not counted as part of the slide deck limit.

Your presentation should highlight the significant points of your argument, but you should include the detail in the speaking notes section of your slides.

Rationale

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This assessment task will assess the following learning outcome/s:

• be able to examine the legal, business and privacy requirements for a cloud deployment model.
• be able to evaluate the risk management requirements for a cloud deployment model.
• be able to critically analyse the legal, ethical and business concerns for the security and privacy of data to be deployed to the cloud.

Marking criteria and standards

back to topQuestionsHDDICRPSFLQ1. Does the operational solution and locations affect DAS security (20 marks)Comprehensive exploration of the use of SaaS and given locations affect the existing security of data that includes well considered and argued reasoning
Thorough   exploration of the use of SaaS and given locations affect the existing security of data that includes good reasoning
Detailed    exploration of the use of SaaS and given locations affect the existing security of data that includes some good reasoning
Adequate    exploration of the use of SaaS and given locations affect the existing security of data that includes some reasoning
Incomplete or irrelevant    exploration of the use of SaaS and given locations affect the existing security of data that includes little or no reasoning
Q2. Does the operational solution and locations increase or mitigate threats and risks to DAS security (20 marks)Comprehensive discussion of how this solution and its locations will increase or mitigate threats and risks to security of DAS that includes  well considered and argued reasoningThorough   discussion of how this solution and its locations will increase or mitigate threats and risks to security of DAS that includes  good reasoningDetailed    discussion of how this solution and its locations will increase or mitigate threats and risks to security of DAS that includes some good reasoningAdequate    discussion of how this solution and its locations will increase or mitigate threats and risks to security of DAS that includes  some reasoningIncomplete or irrelevant    discussion of how this solution and its locations will increase or mitigate threats and risks to security of DAS that includes little or no reasoningQ3. Implications for DAS of data processing location (20 marks)Comprehensive discussion of the security and privacy implications for DAS of the chosen data processing location that includes  well considered and argued reasoningThorough  discussion of the security and privacy implications for DAS of the chosen data processing location that includes  good reasoningDetailed   discussion of the security and privacy implications for DAS of the chosen data processing location that some good reasoningAdequate  discussion of the security and privacy implications for DAS of the chosen data processing location that includes some reasoningIncomplete or inadequate  discussion of the security and privacy implications for DAS of the chosen data processing location that includes  little or no reasoningQ4. Issues of data sensitivity (20 marks)Comprehensive exploration of data sensitivity issues that includes well thought out reasoningThorough exploration of data sensitivity issues that includes good reasoningDetailed exploration of data sensitivity issues that includes some good reasoningAdequate exploration of data sensitivity issues that includes some reasoningInadequate or incomplete exploration of data sensitivity issues that includes little or no reasoningQ5.  Issues of data sovereignty (20 marks)Comprehensive exploration of data sovereignty issues that includes well thought out reasoningThorough exploration of data  sovereignty issues that includes good reasoningDetailed exploration of data  sovereignty issues that includes some good reasoningAdequate exploration of data  sovereignty issues that includes some reasoningInadequate or incomplete exploration of data  sovereignty issues that includes little or no reasoningReferencing & Presentation
Up to 5 marks can be deducted for incorrect or incomplete referencing Up to 5 marks may be deducted for poor presentation, spelling and grammar

Presentation

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Your presentation is to be completed in either PowerPoint or Google slides. Your presentation must not exceed 30 slides of content. 

• The presentation should be a maximum of 30 slides, including introduction, conclusions and recommendations.
• Each slide should have speaking notes in the Notes section which expand on the information in the slide.
• Images and quotations used in slides must be referenced on that slide.
• The slide deck does require a reference list. References are to be included on a Reference list slide(s), but these are not counted as part of the slide deck limit.

Your presentation should highlight the significant points of your argument, but you should include the detail in the speaking notes section of your slides.