In celebration of Privacy Awareness Week, Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank), in partnership with the Aboitiz Equity Ventures (AEV), recently held the fourth iteration of its annual privacy and security event “SELYADO” as part of efforts to promote a culture of security and privacy consciousness among Filipino individuals and organizations.

Going with the theme “Safeguarding Data and Information of Individuals, Businesses, and Communities,” this year’s SELYADO focuses on engaging micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in relevant discussions that will help them protect their customers’ privacy and data, which is essential in today’s continuously growing digital economy.

The opening ceremony for the five-week event took place online last May 18. The event will continue every Wednesday in the next four weeks with the following topics: “Data Proficiency for Beginners” (May 25), “Cybersecurity for MSMEs” (June 1), “Updates on DP Regulations and Data Privacy Trends” (June 8), and “Empowering Your Business through Data Governance” (June 15).

“We want to use SELYADO 4.0 to touch base with MSMEs to make them aware of how cybersecurity can be a strong value proposition for their business. How a trusted business can enable growth as consumers will only transact with organizations they can trust with their information and money” said UnionBank’s Chief Information Security Officer Joey Rufo.

“As we celebrate Privacy Awareness Week together with the National Privacy Commission, we envision inclusive digital transformation and innovation in aiding MSMEs to cater to the data and information needs of their growing sector—inclusive, because we want to empower them to know how they can protect their data and that of their customers,” said UnionBank’s Data Protection Officer and Head of Artificial Intelligence and Data Policy Atty. Sasa Montes.

“Together with the Data Privacy Group and the Cybersecurity Team, we bring SELYADO 4.0 with the cybersecurity specializations that we are very proud of in UnionBank,” said UnionBank’s SME and Micropreneurs Head Jaypee Soliman. “We have partners who are also here to bring their knowledge, expertise, and even their technologies to the MSMEs. These partnerships are very critical, because this fight cannot be handled by one, it cannot be handled by a few, it has to be all of us together learning, understanding, implementing, and even advocating for our security.”

UnionBank’s Head of Blockchain and API Business Group Cathy Casas was one of the speakers during the event, where she talked about the Metaverse and how the emerging idea of a fully immersive virtual world is changing how organizations think.

“We feel that from the Metaverse, especially as blockchain is embedded here, at least the concept of it, it’s not just important now but it will continue to grow in importance in the coming years,” Casas said.

Atty. Darwin Angeles, also one of the event’s speakers, talked about the importance of developing an intellectual property (IP) strategy and touched on how cybersecurity can help protect a business’ IP, which is typically what sets one apart from the competition.

“Security infrastructure is very important because we want to protect something that’s important to us, and for a business, intellectual property, or our brand identity that gives us competitive edge, can be that crown jewel for our business for which we want to seek protection for,” Angeles said.

The third speaker, NPC Deputy Privacy Commissioner Atty. Dug Christopher Mah, did a presentation on accountable personal data management for MSMEs, which reiterated that MSMEs must strictly follow the rules set by the commission in order to ensure the privacy and security of customers.

“Data privacy and data security must be part of the core organization and a strategic concentration for all businesses to safeguard the privacy rights of their customers, especially their data subjects,” Mah said.

“We’re doing this to make sure that security, governance, privacy are a hygiene, and I used the word ‘hygiene’ in its utmost positive and developmental sense, that it is something that facilitates us to develop, to innovate, and build solutions that benefit us, both within the organization, and of course our consumers,” said Dr. David Hardoon during his closing remarks. “It’s ultimately about making sure that privacy is a driver for business development, a driver for innovation, a driver for possibilities.”