PDPA Compliance Overview

The Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) is the primary data protection legislation for Singapore and Thailand, aimed at providing guidelines for organizations to act on personal information and the requirements for them to protect personal data. Although each country has a unique PDPA framework, they have similar underlying principles, including accountability, consent, purpose limitation, and reasonable security measures for personal information throughout its lifecycle.

Why It Matters

PDPA compliance is imperative for companies that operate in or work with personal data originating from Singapore or Thailand. In both locales, regulators are active and non-compliance can result in fines, corrective orders, and damage to your reputation. Having the same data protection practices in place and maintained in an internationally relevant manner is very important to build trust and reduce regulatory and operational risks considering the rise of digital services and cross-border data flows.

Core Focus Areas

PDPA concentrates on the lawful and transparent ways in which data is collected, consenting to the processing and management of data, controlling what use data may be used for, limitations on when and why it can be used, and privacy. Organizations will need to be accountable, record keeping is done with confidence, and they will be responsive to a data subject request and will be able to keep and enforce security restrictions reflective of the degree of sensitivity in data processing.

Next Steps

Typically when organizations revisit their PDPA posture they look to enhance visibility through personal data, strengthen governance and security controls, and ensure seamless processing of consent or data subject requests across systems and geographies.