Firms attend PIA tests to better protect personal data

Ten Chinese Internet firms have started privacy impact assessment, or PIA test aiming to standardize and improve personal information protection, Shanghai Daily learned on Wednesday.

The 10 firms include Baidu, Douyin, Kuaishou and IntSig Information, which have huge user bases or data volumes in daily operation.

PIA involves the inspection of enterprises throughout the entire life cycle of data activities, from collection, storage, use, processing, transmission, disclosure, and deletion of personal information. PIA mainly judges risk of damage to the legitimate rights and interests of the subject of personal information.

In 2021, China passed its first Personal Information Protection Law. It's designed to prevent businesses from collecting sensitive personal data and to crack down on cyber crimes like online fraud and data theft.

Currently, 10 firms have applied for PIA test and are expected to set up privacy protection and data security standards for data and privacy security.

The test is vital to drive the implementation guidelines for PIA segmentation scenarios and make the industry standards more practical and useful, said IntSig Information, a Shanghai-based technology firm among the 10 firms to attend PIA tests nationwide.

IntSig now serves about several hundred million users globally, with business clients in 30 industries covering banking, finance, logistics and manufacturing.