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Being able to assist clients in operational compliance with data protection regulations, and helping them save money, resources and – crucially – time, has been one of the most memorable aspects of Benjamin Shepherdson’s job.
For nearly eight years, Shepherdson has been Country Manager, Malaysia, for data protection consultancy firm Straits Interactive, which runs the DPEX Network community.
Benjamin Shepherdson
In this time, he has worked with a team of experienced consultants to assist clients across multiple industries in Malaysia, including the retail, education, finance, telecommunications and energy sectors.
Among his various clients, many of whom still reach out to him from time to time for advice, Shepherdson is most gratified to recall one for whom he managed to do a gap assessment in six to eight weeks, after the organisation had struggled in this endeavour for eight months.
“This is the most satisfying part, when clients come back to you and say, ‘You know what, Ben, before we engaged you right, we spent 7 to 8 months trying to put in the gap assessment,’” said Sherpherdson.
“‘And here we are, after 6 to 8 weeks having run through a couple of sessions, we have almost completed compiling [the report] and are ready to present it to the head office.’”
“It's not to say that [the client] could not have done it without us,” he added. “But it was just whether to do it in seven or eight months, or to do it in about two months? They needed to present this assessment and we were able to help them do so in the fastest time possible.”