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80 | The South African Insurance Industry Survey 2016

Careless users may leave their wearable or smart the world are quickly made available worldwide. Many INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
phone unattended, where any person may pick it up and countries have established privacy laws which regulate AND BUSINESS ARE
peruse the data stored thereon. Wearables themselves the processing of personal information, including health BECOMING INEXTRICABLY
are not typically password protected or secured, and information, and in some countries more stringent INTERWOVEN. I DON'T THINK
smartphones and other devices are only as secure as their safeguards to ensure the privacy of individuals’ health- ANYBODY CAN TALK
lock screen password, if enabled. related information (such as HITECH in the United States) MEANINGFULLY ABOUT ONE
would need to be considered. WITHOUT THE TALKING
Future concerns include the susceptibility of the Internet ABOUT THE OTHER.
of Things to cyber-attacks. While not currently viewed as Furthermore, some countries require mechanisms to be
a serious problem, it is poised to become one as smart in place to protect personal information that is transferred Bil Gates
devices, wearables and other smart appliances become across borders. Through increased accessibility of
more widely adopted, providing would-be thieves with a wearables and related applications globally and the Theft of individual health data, such as
plethora of information about individuals4. differing legal requirements for privacy between countries, electronic medical records (EMR), for
challenges are presented to both users and service sale on the black market is extremely
Privacy of the user is closely linked to the security providers to determine the applicable legislation and lucrative
considerations and concerns that are inherent to regulatory framework that is to be applied.
wearables. Wearables that process health-related
information - which may be anything from vital statistics Breaches of personal information held by organisations,
to sleeping patterns - and track user locations, require especially health-related information, are also a concern.
additional safeguards to be in place to ensure the In 2014, the top five health-related breaches in the
protection and lawful processing of such information USA alone affected 7.4 million individuals.6 Breaches
in accordance with various legislation and regulations of personal information are not only costly to the
in place worldwide. However, despite the number of organisations responsible for the data – as highlighted in
countries with laws regulating the use of personal a recent IBM study which estimated the average cost of a
information, few laws holistically address the collection, breach to companies was US$3.5 Million7- but also to the
storage, use, sharing and disclosure of personal individual whose sensitive health information becomes
information obtained through wearables. public or falls into the wrong hands.

Wearables are often used with a number of applications
which may be free, paid for or come preinstalled on
wearable devices. What is not evident is who has access
to the data once you have loaded it from the wearable
onto the application. Even more disconcerting is that once
you have done so, you may not own the data anymore.
A review of 100 health and fitness apps available on the
iOS and Android app stores found that more than half of
the reviewed programmes did not have a Privacy Policy5
in place, which may be an indication of their lack of
commitment to ensuring the privacy of users.

Globalisation provides another facet of complexity.
Wearables and applications developed in one part of

4 http://securelist.com/blog/research/66439/wearable-security-present-and-future/
5 http://www.forbes.com/sites/symantec/2014/08/19/how-safe-is-the-data-on-your-cwearable-tech/
6 http://www.databreachtoday.com/biggest-health-data-breaches-in-2014-a-7705
7 http://www.935.ibm.com/services/multimedia/SEL03027USEN_Poneman_2014_Cost_of_Data_Breach_Study.pdf