AWS and the New Zealand notifiable privacy breach scheme

The updated New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 (Privacy Act) will come into force on December 1, 2020. Importantly, it establishes a new notifiable privacy breach scheme (NZ scheme). The NZ scheme gives affected individuals the opportunity to take steps to protect their personal information following a privacy breach that has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm. It also reinforces entities’ accountability for the personal information they hold.

We’re happy to announce that Amazon Web Services (AWS) now offers two types of New Zealand Notifiable Data Breach (NZNDB) addenda to customers who are subject to the Privacy Act and are using AWS to store and process personal information covered by the NZ scheme. The NZNDB addenda address customers’ need for notification if a security event affects their data.

We’ve made both types of NZNDB addenda available online as click-through agreements in AWS Artifact, which is our customer-facing audit and compliance portal that can be accessed from the AWS Management Console. In AWS Artifact, you can review and activate the relevant NZNDB addendum for those AWS accounts you use to store and process personal information covered by the NZ scheme.

The first type, the Account NZNDB Addendum, applies only to the specific individual account that accepts the Account NZNDB Addendum. The Account NZNDB Addendum must be separately accepted for each AWS account that you need to cover.

The second type, the AWS Organizations ANDB Addendum, once accepted by a management account in AWS Organizations, applies to the management account and all member accounts in that organization. If you don’t need or want to take advantage of the AWS Organizations ANDB Addendum, you can still accept the Account ANDB Addendum for individual accounts.

As with all AWS Artifact features, there is no additional cost to use AWS Artifact to review, accept, and manage either the individual Account NZNDB Addendum or AWS Organizations NZNDB Addendum. To learn more about AWS Artifact, including how to view, download, and accept the NZNDB addenda, visit the AWS Artifact FAQ page.

We welcome the arrival of the NZ scheme, and hope it helps New Zealand entities to improve their security capabilities.

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