Our experts

Paolo Balboni

Paolo Balboni (PhD) is a Professor of Privacy, Cybersecurity, and IT Contract Law at the European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity (ECPC) within the Maastricht University Faculty of Law. His main research focuses are cybersecurity, data management/sharing and data protection as a corporate social responsibility, which together can be used to help organisations responsibly further their economic targets and at the same time positively contribute to the development of a fair data-centric society.

Qualified lawyer specialized in ICT, Privacy & Cybersecurity admitted to the Milan Bar and registered to the Amsterdam Bar. He is a Founding Partner of ICT Legal Consulting (ICTLC), an international law firm, and ICT Cyber Consulting, a company specialized in information/data security. Prof. Dr. Balboni is a Recommended Lawyer ranked by The Legal 500 EMEA 2023 in the areas of Data Privacy and Data Protection and Industry Focus: TMT. He is the Chairman of the European Patent Office (EPO) Data Protection Board, Member of the EUMETSAT Data Protection Supervisory Authority, Member of the Europrivacy Board of Experts, Member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on B2B data sharing and cloud computing contracts, and of the Cloud Security Alliance’s AI Safety Expert Group. Prof. Dr. Balboni furthermore advises governments on national matters concerning cybersecurity and privacy and in 2018, he drafted the national Surinamese Privacy and Data Protection Law.

Martim Taborda Barata

Martim Taborda Barata is a qualified Portuguese lawyer and, since 2020, Partner at ICTLC International. He has a law degree from the Lisbon Catholic University of Portugal (Universidade Católica Portuguesa de Lisboa), and completed an LL.M. at King’s College London on Intellectual Property & Information Law. Having accumulated over 8 years of practical experience in information and communication technology, privacy, data protection/security, intellectual property and video game law, Martim’s primary focus is managing privacy and data protection compliance strategies for multinational clients (including organisations in the courier and mail delivery, fintech, banking, healthcare, payroll processing, compliance attestation, IT service provision, software development, cloud computing, food confection, retail and education sectors), EU institutions and international organisations (notably in the humanitarian sector), as well as local subsidiaries and public institutions in Portugal. As needed, he further advises these clients, as well as start-ups and smaller companies, on ad hoc privacy/data protection matters, as well as on a range of related legal domains, notably intellectual property, IT, consumer and video game law. He obtained an ECPC-B DPO certification from the University of Maastricht in 2017, became a Lead Auditor/Consultant for the CSA Code of Conduct for GDPR Compliance in 2019, and is certified as a Europrivacy Implementer since 2021. He is also a member of the Ethics Committee of the Portuguese Cancer League’s South/Lisbon Branch, where he helps to assess clinical trial and investigation projects from a legal and ethical standpoint. Since 2022, he has acted as a Guest/External Lecturer at the ECPC’s invitation in several courses of the Advanced Master in Privacy, Cybersecurity and Data Management, as well as the Data Protection Officer (DPO) Certification Course (ECPC-B).