A regional survey by CPA Australia about business technology adoption collected responses from 1,117 accounting and finance professionals across markets in the Asia-Pacific such as Australia, mainland China, including 154 responses from Hong Kong.
Commenting on the results, Dr Albert Wong, Deputy Chair of CPA Australia’s Greater Bay Area Committee stated that the Hong Kong SAR Government has an instrumental role to play in the transformation to AI. He called for policy support to build a future-ready workforce in Hong Kong.
“The Government could collaborate with organisations and employers to upskill existing workforce on AI-centric training; offer subsidies to encourage SMEs to pilot/adopt different types of AI in their businesses and create internship schemes that give university students the opportunity to apply AI tools to real-world problem-solving.”
Data is the new oil for technology. Among the surveyed markets, Hong Kong respondents raised the most concerns about increasing data protection and privacy issues (26 per cent) from AI adoption.
On a positive note, 72 per cent said that they had implemented cybersecurity in the past 12 months, and Hong Kong’s overall cybersecurity maturity is considerably high.
Mr Winson Woo, a member of CPA Australia’s Greater Bay Area Committee shared his views on data protection and governance, “Many technologies already have embedded AI functions, so AI adoption will continue to increase in the future.
“Organisations should establish an AI development roadmap to plan how to apply AI to achieve strategic goals, and how to measure the return of investment, as well as setting clear governance guidelines to ensure the ethical use of AI tools in the workplace.”
When discussing cybersecurity, he highlighted two emerging trends: Manage Security Operations Center (MSOC), a model of outsourcing security operations center (SOC) functions to third-party service providers to perform real-time detection and monitoring of cyber attacks and threats; and AI security, which protects AI systems from data breaches and misuse.
He also emphasised the importance of staff training in data protection, “To reduce the risk of data leakage, companies should invest not only in technical software, but also in enhancing staff’s security awareness, to ensure that AI users understand which authorised data can be used in AI tools and which sensitive information cannot be disclosed.”
Mr Woo believes that the introduction of guidelines and regulations, such as the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance and the Protection of Critical Infrastructure (Computer System) Ordinance, will help to create an ethical environment that promotes innovation and technology in Hong Kong.
