Issues and Possibilities of Personal Data Remote Processing in the COVID19 Pandemic Environment

Abstract

In the spring of 2020, an unprecedented event happened – a massive transfer of employees to remote working, to work from home. As is well known, this is due to the outbreak of the COVID19 coronavirus pandemic. The Russian Government ordered the heads of companies, organizations and institutions to voluntarily and compulsorily send employees to remote work. We will not discuss the effectiveness of these measures and the impact that was inflicted as a result on both business and the economy as a whole. A similar thing happened in November 2020, which is associated with the second wave of coronavirus. In this regard, the management of companies and organizations faced a number of tasks that require a quick and efficient solution. One of the important tasks is to ensure the protection of sensitive information. Such information is personal data belonging to the category of restricted data. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the possibility of personal data processing in the remote working mode. This raises a number of questions. Is it technically possible to protect personal data from leaks? What do the regulatory documents of regulatory authority for the personal data say protection about this? How to organize and control the personal data operator employees’ working and actions? The author will try to answer to these questions in this article. Due to the fact that the issues related to both the organization of remote working and the organization of the personal data processing in different countries differs, the author will rely on the regulatory legal acts of the Russian Federation.