In the first hours of an incident?
Speak to counsel — +351 919 497 920 — monitored outside working hours · first stepsJoão Ferreira Pinto advises international organisations on data protection, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and European digital regulation. He has led CyberLAWYERS.pt since 2010.
He is unusual among Portuguese lawyers in the field in three respects: he holds standing Data Protection Officer appointments rather than only advising DPOs; he has worked inside the European legislative process; and his legal training is matched by formal technical training in information security.
01Regulatory and DPO experience
He served as Data Protection Officer to Portugal's Supreme Court of Justice (Supremo Tribunal de Justiça) from 2021 to 2026, and currently serves as DPO to a Portuguese payments and digital identity group operating national payment infrastructure, and to a Lisbon public authority.
The work is the practice of data protection rather than the theory of it: monitoring, board reporting, impact assessments, breach handling and direct engagement with the supervisory authority.
02European and institutional experience
He worked as Technical Attaché for Digital Affairs at Portugal's Permanent Representation to the European Union, including during the Portuguese Presidency of the Council in 2021, where he negotiated on the ePrivacy Regulation file and followed the DMA, DSA, AI Act, Data Act, Data Governance Act and eIDAS 2 in the Council.
He has served on the board of the AEDPJ — Association of European Data Protection Judges, Brussels — since 2023, and is a member of the IAPP.
03Academic activity
He has taught at the University of Lisbon School of Law since 2017, on postgraduate programmes in data protection and in FinTech law. He has lectured on the ERA Summer Course on Data Protection at the Academy of European Law in Trier.
04Representative experience
Described by sector and scale, never by client name.
Digital regulation applies to systems, not to documents. We work where law, technology and governance actually meet — which is where the obligations bite.