Through this project, the Directorate for the Protection of Personal Data will provide support from the Norwegian Authority for the Protection of Personal Data by creating better mechanisms for the protection of personal data on social networks, strengthening awareness of privacy and technological development, as well as strengthening the Directorate’s capacities. for the protection of personal data by providing a more efficient way of protecting personal data on the Internet and social networks.
The project will be implemented through two components:
- The first component refers to the protection of personal data through social networks. For this purpose, a team will be established in the Directorate for the Protection of Personal Data, which will respond to the requests of citizens whose personal data has been misused or their privacy has been violated on social networks. In addition to this, three information centers for the protection of personal data will be opened.
- The second component is intended for employees of the Directorate for Personal Data Protection, controllers and processors in order for them to acquire knowledge about Cloud computing and personal data protection. Within the framework of the second component, a regional conference will be organized, which will be dedicated to the new technological development and the protection of personal data.
In the past years (more than a decade) we have witnessed a revolution in communications. Increasingly, professional and private communication takes place online and two-way. There is a growing trend of an increasing number of services available online, accompanied by a large amount of multimedia content. In all this, the states are not lagging behind, offering online services for their citizens of all kinds, contributing to the further development of the digital (information) society, seeing this type of service delivery as a means for further savings, i.e. reducing the costs of providing services to citizens, as well as a means for the development of new and previously unavailable services, often only through the Internet, because that way they will be available regardless of physical limitations, including territorial limitations. In such an environment, there is an interest in the elaboration of the phenomena of social networks and the cloud computing concept in relation to the protection of personal data that inevitably circulate on the Internet in various forms and contexts. The protection of personal data is the subject of intense global debate, caused by the extraordinary development of information technology (IT), the ever-growing capacity of products for storing and processing data and their interconnection. In this direction, and as part of the project, an Analysis of the state of the organizational and institutional capacities for the protection of personal data was made.
As part of the project, a survey was conducted on the awareness of Cloud Computing companies in Macedonia. Conducted on 249 companies with different profiles, the results of the same point to the fact that the term “cloud computing” is still insufficiently known, that is, there is only a partial degree of awareness among companies.
The importance of personal data and their protection as the main goal of this research, consisting of two parts: qualitative and quantitative, is confirmed by the fact that companies perceive security and data control as the least advantage.
The qualitative part of the research, conducted through conversations with professionals in the IT sphere, confirm the results of the quantitative part, i.e. the fact that this target group, unlike the others, is much better informed about the problem, so especially those who offer services of this kind have greater chances to lead regulation rather than just follow it. The day-to-day monitoring of the problem, combined with the daily new problems that need to be solved and the need to stay within the limits of what is legally allowed make them the most relevant for further shaping of cloud computing regulation that would do well to go beyond the policy level. , towards full control not only of storage but also of access to personal data.
