Canadian and UK perspectives on electronic business data transfer

This paper is positioned around the notion that in an era of ubiquitous computing and digitalization of data, the Information Assurance in Security and Privacy (IASP) issues cannot be contained within geographic boundaries. Instead, they must be approached from a comparative cross-border perspective. Such a multi-dimensional inspection is even more critical because in the domain of electronic data transfer there is a knowledge gap across all sectors, lack of synchronization between geographic domains, and lack of public insight into the practices of the main players, including businesses. Here the authors present results of the preliminary research regarding comparison of Canadian and the United Kingdom practices in the management of electronic information on the Internet. The focus is primarily on policies and practices of electronic data storage and transfer, protection of privacy, and electronic business data transfer. This study represents the first stage of a larger project that will encompass several geographic regions.