Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/1336129
10 www.canadianlawyermag.com/inhouse GC PROFILE WHEN ERICA ZARKOVICH joined LifeLabs in June 2020, the organization was still reeling from a widely publicized cyberattack that exposed the personal information of an estimated 15 million Canadians in 2019, so handling related litigation matters and developing a strong privacy program were critical responsibilities. Implementing a strong foundation for privacy at the Canadian laboratory testing company has been at the top of the list of priorities for Zarkovich in her role as vice president, general counsel, chief privacy officer and corporate secretary. "Often, with privacy, there is a tendency to just be reactionary, without having a strong foundation," says Zarkovich. "In order to further mature the privacy program at LifeLabs, we've gone back to the first principles and looked at our suite of policies and our procedures and we've rewritten those to make them easy to understand and easy to implement and translatable across all business lines, so they are accessible to everybody." Together with the information security team, Zarkovich also developed a cybersecu- Building a strong foundation for privacy Erica Zarkovich embraces the challenge of developing new privacy policies on the heels of a major data breach at LifeLabs rity privacy committee with which she shares the new policies. "The work we are doing is foundational, so it sets the tone for privacy across the organization. It allows everybody to under- stand the importance of privacy and it's enabled us to be proactive instead of reactive," she says. The team now follows a suite of policies and procedures that can be drawn upon in the event of a privacy breach. Implementing concepts such as privacy by design has also been helpful. One of her strategies has been building cross-functionality within her eight-person team to ensure that each member has a strong understanding of privacy. "I'm trying to develop a team in which each of us has an understanding of the privacy issues and to build that cross-functionality because we're a small team and we're federal and we deal with a lot of issues all the time," she says. In addition to building privacy policies and programs and dealing with breaches, Zarkovich also manages litigation matters, negotiates all major contracts and manages stakeholder relationships with health authorities, regulators and board members in "The work we are doing is foundational, so it sets the tone for privacy across the entire organization. It allows everybody to understand the importance of privacy and it's enabled us to be proactive instead of reactive."