The world of business is full of sensitive information, from employee and customer records to research conducted by proprietary researchers and financial data. If these sensitive pieces information are compromised, it can lead to huge expenses, lost trust and damage to the brand. Security and privacy practices that are well-established can help minimize the consequences of a breach by providing a solid base for a firm’s cyber security strategy.
Privacy and security of data are often misunderstood, but they have distinct meanings. Data privacy concerns protecting an individual’s rights through businesses adhering to regulations and business practices. Data security focuses on protecting the data from external threats.
Data privacy is about giving users information on the reasons they are being collected and obtaining their consent before restricting the the scope of data collection and only utilizing data needed for the intended purpose. It is also about making sure that the user has access to their own data and is able to rectify or erase them. Privacy protection policies also dictate the use of encryption, passwords, and other security measures to ensure that only authorized people can access data.
To lessen the risk of data breaches caused by human error, it is also important to train and educate customers and employees on security measures for passwords and social engineering as well as phishing techniques. Backup of data and monitoring backup processes to identify and address any issues is a crucial element of data protection. This will ensure that data is recoverable when it is damaged or unavailable due to any reason, for example an outage on the system or natural disaster, or cyberattack.