In this episode of Speaking of Signify, Ryan Millar has a chat with Imaan Faruqui, External Communications Intern at Signify. The episode focuses on innovations and patents, and incorporates valuable input from Marc de Samber, Research Fellow at Signify, Jean-Paul Linnartz, Research Fellow at Signify and Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, Nathan Millen, Intellectual Property Counsel at Signify, and Stephen Cumpson, Senior IP Counsel at Signify.

WeeShirl Ng, Head of Internal Audit at Signify opens up about what an exciting team and job she leads within the company, where she’s been for the past seven years.

In this episode, WeeShirl goes on to explain what exactly internal auditing is within a company, as well as explaining the processes it’s made up of. Surprisingly, this is not as “by-the-book” as one would think. At the heart of auditing is risk assessment, yet risks can be many and diverse.

As Signify operates in 74 countries, they must obey different national regulations, so the risks are also different around the globe. They can vary from corruption to revenue recognition, and everything else in between, so picture it a bit like police work. Like any good detective, the work isn’t just done by a checklist, but a lot more thought gets put into it. To make the processes a leaner and simpler one, the auditing team also goes in to investigate if the elements on the checklist make sense, and how it is possible to make it more efficient.

Ryan and WeeShirl also discuss the changes she’s experienced in her seven years of working in auditing for Signify, which was Philips Lighting when she started. WeeShirl explains some of the changes her job and team went through, as well as growing with the company itself.

Following the conversation of this reimagined police work, Ryan dives into the five alternative questions section of the episode. Here you’ll learn about WeeShirl’s coffee preferences, favorite comfort food and even her hidden talent! Of course, this has nothing on the pure love felt by both Ryan and WeeShirl for the Frozen soundtrack -- and one song in particular. So, if you simply can’t hold it back anymore, just (Let it) go, and listen!

Marjolein’s role as Chief Privacy Officer consists of advising Signify on its compliance programs, assisting in negotiations and doing risk assessments. She supports her team of privacy officers who assess each initiative on the potential impact of the initiative towards the privacy rights of individuals.

To ensure that the company has a robust privacy structure in shape, there are three keys questions to keep in mind:

1. What is the impact of this initiative on privacy?

2. If there is an impact, what do I need to consider?

3. How do I build in design principles on security, privacy compliance, and guide them?

But why is privacy important? As a company, respecting human rights and basic principles such as protecting your individual rights, your freedom is important. Acting with integrity is part of our DNA, protecting of personal data becomes more and more relevant in our digitalized world.

If we look at how Signify is developing, if it's digitalizing, consumer and customer interfaces, our own internal ways of working with digitalization, you come across the fact that you need to log into something you need to administrate it, and with that Signify gets the data. If that data then also holds that connection to personal data, it becomes relevant. That is what's coloring the importance of the privacy program in lines of our compliance progress.

When it comes to data ethics, we need to start thinking about the protection of data as a whole.