On 7 November, the Legal & Regulatory Committee of BritCham Shanghai hosted a hybrid roundtable event at the PwC office. The topic of discussion was “Crisis Management: Handling China Data Breaches and Security Incidents,” featuring insights shared by legal and risk assurance experts from Clyde & Co and PwC.
This event welcomed BritCham Shanghai members who displayed a keen interest in addressing recent challenges in data security domain.
The gathering commenced with a warm welcome from Alex Roberts, Counsel of Linklaters LLP, and ExCo Sponsor of BritCham Shanghai Legal & Regulatory Committee who extended his greetings to all the attendees.
Patrick Wong, Partner of PwC, initiated the roundtable discussion with a presentation on “Recent Data Breaches and Trends – Learnings from the Trenches.” He outlined the prevailing cybersecurity landscape in 2023, shedding light on the top cyber threats. Notably, ransomware incidents constituted a staggering 67% of the cyber security incidents across the Asia Pacific region based on PwC China’s experiences in the past year. The discussion also touched upon the importance of improving detection and response capabilities, emphasizing the need to detect threats across the entire kill chain. Patrick illustrated this with examples of social engineering tactics and highlighted key vulnerabilities, such as weak and compromised credentials, exposed and unpatched vulnerabilities, as well as the challenges of phishing and slow detection and response.
Following this, Katherine Yin, Senior Associate of Clyde & Co Westlink JLV, and Zheng Guang Lam, Senior Associate of Clyde & Co, delved into “Data Breach Management & Response – Looking Through the Legal Lens.” They discussed common types and causes of data breaches, including incidents caused by employees, third-party breaches, external attacks, and the loss or damage to physical media. The presentation also offered valuable insights into effective data breach response strategies, with a focus on key players in this process, including forensic experts, legal counsel, public relations teams, and IT specialists. They emphasized the essential elements that should be included in a data breach notification.
The roundtable event brought together distinguished representatives from various business sectors, creating an opportunity for meaningful discussions, and sharing of real-world examples. Experts were on hand to provide valuable guidance and engage in open dialogues with the participants. It’s worth noting that the attendees found the event to be incredibly insightful and informative.
Among the esteemed attendees were representatives from prominent organizations such as HSBC China, Barclays Bank Shanghai Branch, Modern Water, Smiths, INEOS, Swire Shipping Pte.Ltd, and Linklaters Zhao sheng.
