Taking information to the cloud is no longer a choice. It's a necessity. The question is how to make this journey safely, guaranteeing privacy and respecting the new Brazilian legislation. The reflection was present in the speeches of the specialists who participated in the panel “Offers in the cloud and security and privacy issues”, held this Thursday (1), at the RNP 2022 Forum. 

Conductor of the table, which had the presence of all the guests, the director of Services and Solutions at RNP, Antônio Carlos F. Nunes, started the conversation by listing the main legal and normative references for the technology sector. Among them, the General Data Protection Law (LGPD) and Normative Instruction No. 5, which provides for minimum information security requirements for the use of cloud computing solutions by federal administration bodies. 

André Castro, undersecretary for information technology at the Ministry of Education, said that the main challenge is not to fail to deliver solutions to citizens while public entities adapt to the new laws: “Security is not a solo flight, it cannot be a limiter of institutional strategies. Going to the cloud is not a choice, it's a necessity”. 

The coordinator of the college of information and communication technology managers of the National Association of Directors of Federal Institutions of Higher Education (Andifes), Teresa Maciel, agreed. “Universities are no longer able to live off data centers and internal storage, as a matter of service continuity and investment. The cloud is a must”, she said. 

As a representative of the provider market, Cyrano Rizzo, executive director of Calriz, a company specialized in cloud solutions, stated that the limitation of human resources and changes in legislation impose difficulties. At the same time, he stressed that security and privacy issues are increasingly important in projects. “No one knows the emotion that a technology manager has when we can see a product on the air”, he confided. 

The solution to the challenges, Teresa pointed out, involves dialogue and initiatives that bring together specialists from different sectors, just like the RNP Forum: “I see this information channel as a great opportunity. We have been having easy communication with providers, with RNP, which is a great partner of universities, and with the Ministry of Education”.

When law meets design to make information transparent

“Does your organization democratize privacy and data protection?”. The question gave the title to the panel presented by Fabiani Borges and Ana Paula Holtz, this Thursday (1st), at the RNP 2022 Forum. The lawyers dealt with a topic that they believe needs to be increasingly disseminated: legal design - the way institutions and companies communicate their data use policies in digital interfaces. 

Explaining how information is treated to users of websites, apps and other digital platforms is an obligation of the LGPD, which came into force last year. Fabiani Borges and Ana Paula Holtz managed to deal with the technical issue without falling into “legalese”. Friends, or “comadres”, in their own words, the two experts said they are always talking, whether about family or about their area of expertise, the interface between technology and law.  

Ana Paula Holtz explained that there are a series of tools and concepts to improve citizens' experience in the digital world. Privacy notices need to be easy for the general public to understand and navigate. 

“Democratization is about giving accessibility. The lawyer will write, but to put it in a digital interface, he needs a designer who works on the user experience”, said the specialist. 

And democratizing information means giving access to all people. “Nothing is more digital than giving access. Enabling all users to have equivalent experiences”, she said. Privacy notices therefore also need to be understood by people with visual or hearing impairments, color blindness, autistic and people with attention deficit, for example.   

Fabiani Borges, partner at the law firm EBQ, said that one way to expand the reach of information about data use is the use of videos. When criticizing the legal language, she stressed that messages need to be transmitted effectively and clearly, increasing the adherence of institutions and companies to the LGPD. 

“Perhaps we have this characteristic of transparency only in consumer law. But the law has become so entrenched that, the more obscure one speaks, the more Latin one uses, the greater the perception that a person is intelligent, when, in practice, he is not at all”, evaluated the lawyer.

The principles of Legal Design were also the subject of one of the podcasts of Forum RNP 2022. Watch here!