7.1 Introduction

The protection of customers and employees and the security of data and infrastructure are priorities of Electricity Canada.

Introduction to Industry Focus Areas

The electricity industry continuously monitors evolving trends, issues, risk factors, and societal expectations, and embeds the consideration and management of them into its activities. Key focal areas include:

• Data privacy

• Serving Indigenous communities

• Health and safety

• Physical and cybersecurity

Reference Documents

To facilitate your understanding of terminology used in this course, please download the glossary of electrical terms.

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Information Protection

Let’s first look at data privacy.

• Names and addresses of customers

• Banking information

• Customer electricity usage information

• Employee records

All of the above are examples of protected information.

The utility can only use this information for the purpose for which it was collected and cannot disclose this information without the individual’s consent.

Data Privacy

Electricity utilities fall under Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and must therefore obtain an individual’s consent when they collect, use, or disclose that individual’s personal information.

All Canadians have the right to access their personal information held by an organization. They also have the right to challenge its accuracy.

Personal information can only be used for the purposes for which it was collected. If a utility is going to use it for another purpose, it must again seek consent. Personal information must be protected by appropriate safeguards.

• Utilities collect a significant amount of data that they must protect. This includes personal information such as names, addresses, contact numbers, email addresses, and banking information; and

• electricity usage information such as metering data, including consumption and demand.

The amount and granularity of data have increased several-fold—from millions to billions of data points— through increased digitization of the grid in the form of smart meters and other technologies. This data is of great use to utilities for planning and operational purposes. But this same information could be of significant interest to bad actors. Utilities must therefore remain vigilant in the protection of customer data.

Now that you have learned about the importance of data privacy, let’s look at some other key industry focus areas.