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Privacy Awareness Week 2026

Privacy compliance and artificial intelligence risks

Privacy Awareness Week (PAW) is an opportunity for organisations to move beyond policy and compliance and focus on how privacy, privacy governance, and data protection operate in practice across systems, processes and people.

At Holding Redlich, our Digital Economy and Data & Privacy teams are working with clients navigating increasingly complex privacy challenges. As regulatory expectations evolve, there is a growing focus on whether privacy frameworks are not only well-designed, but effective in operation.

What we’re seeing in the market

Across sectors, a number of consistent themes are emerging:

  • mature frameworks still breaking down in execution, highlighting gaps in privacy compliance and governance, leading to complaints, incidents and regulatory scrutiny
  • Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) undertaken as compliance exercises, without fully testing real-world scenarios or data protection implications
  • increased regulatory focus on accountability, privacy governance, and clear ownership of privacy risk
  • technology adoption — particularly artificial intelligence and data-driven platforms — creating new and not always well understood risks
  • heightened customer and stakeholder expectations, with privacy practices directly impacting trust and reputation

Top 5 trends in privacy – Australian Government:

Our focus this Privacy Awareness Week

Throughout Privacy Awareness Week, we will be sharing insights and practical guidance on strengthening privacy compliance, governance, and data protection with a focus on:

  • where privacy frameworks are falling short in practice
  • how to strengthen Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) and embed real-world scenarios
  • managing privacy risks associated with artificial intelligence and emerging technologies
  • lessons from recent complaints, incidents and regulatory activity
  • building organisational capability — not just compliance
How we can help

How we can help

Our team advises across the full spectrum of data and privacy matters, including:

  • privacy governance, compliance frameworks and program design
  • Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) and data protection program uplift
  • data breaches, incident response and regulatory compliance
  • artificial intelligence, technology and data strategy with embedded privacy governance
  • regulatory engagement, investigations and privacy compliance advice

If you would like to discuss how to strengthen your organisation’s approach to privacy compliance, governance or data protection, please get in touch with our team.

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