Data breaches are highly problematic for the afflicted organization and its customers, who are people like you and me. Stolen data can range from benign information to incredibly personal facts, depending on the firm.
In any case, a data breach can be costly to repair and might harm a company’s reputation.
What Is Data Privacy?
Data privacy is a set of guidelines for how sensitive and essential data should be acquired and handled. Personal Health Information (PHI) and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) are two examples of data privacy. Financial data, medical records, social security or ID numbers, names, birthdates, and contact information are all examples.
Why Is Data Privacy Important?
All sensitive information that organizations handle, including customers, stockholders, and employees, is usually critical to a company’s operations, growth, and revenues.
Data privacy guarantees that only those with permission to see sensitive information have access to it. It assists businesses in meeting regulatory requirements by blocking cybercriminals from misusing data.
Data protection regulations enforce data privacy, and noncompliance can result in monetary penalties and the loss of brand authority.
What Is Data Protection?
Data protection is a set of processes and approaches that ensure your data’s confidentiality, accessibility, and authenticity. It’sIt’s sometimes referred to as information security or information protection.
Any company that collects, transmits, or maintains private information, should have a data security strategy. A good plan can aid in the prevention of data loss, theft, or corruption and mitigate the harm caused by a breach or disaster.
Despite the regularity of privacy violations and the media coverage that follows them, few individuals are aware of essential concepts related to data storage, such as the distinction between data privacy and data protection.
Chris Kirby (Retired), Ivailо Nikolov (SiteGround), and other Forbes Technology Council members explain the difference between data privacy and data protection, as well as the significance of putting the right processes in place to protect digital assets, in the paragraphs below.
Having One Doesn’t Ensure The Other
Data protection is focused on protecting assets from unauthorized use, while data privacy defines who has authorized access. One can say that data protection is mainly a technical control, while data privacy is more of a process or legal matter. One doesn’t ensure the other, and we need both to work together as a proper control mechanism. – Sameer Shelke, aujas.com
Ensuring Your Data Is Only Accessed As Intended
The distinction between privacy and protection boils down to who we intend to share your data with versus how we plan to protect your data from everyone else. At the data access level, they mean the same thing. But in reality, protecting data from unauthorized access requires going beyond a simple ACL scheme and defending against all the vulnerabilities of the underlying systems. – Chris Kirby, Retired
To What Extent Is Your Data Safe?
Your personal information may not be as secure as you believe it is, and it might cost you dearly. You, unintentionally, are a part of the threat, depending on how much information you reveal and to whom you disclose it. A large percentage of cyber breaches – up to 30% – are caused by “negligence or mistakes,” which occur when people fail to act appropriately or follow procedures.
Digital has grown so integrated into our lives two decades after the web’s inception that it’s easy to assume you know the best security procedures to protect you and your company from a data breach.Â
However, as technology continues to drive changes in the way we live and work and the Internet of Things grows more prevalent, the digital threats we all face will only grow as more gadgets communicate data globally.
Check if Your Data Is Safe and Protect It
You can maintain security against outside parties’ unauthorized efforts to access your data and protect your privacy from people you don’t consent to share your information with by making a few easy modifications to your devices and accounts. It’s simple to get started.
Here’s a rundown of a few easy steps you can take to safeguard yourself and your data online.
- How much Google knows you
If you use a Google product, the company collects information about you to provide a more tailored experience on future visits. Google explains what kind of information it gathers and why it collects it. Your name, age, gender, workplace, home location, chill locations, and places you frequent, among other things, are among the data it collects.
You can limit Google’s access to your personal information partially or fully. Using the Privacy Checkup tool, you can alter the information you want to share with Google and the general public. You can also restrict the theft and mining of your confidential information by turning everything off on your Google account’s Activity Page.
- Keep the Basics of Cybersecurity in Mind
The procedure employed to protect computer networks from hostile intrusions is called cybersecurity. On a personal level, choosing strong passwords and multi-factor authentication might limit the exposure of your information to such attacks.
You are encouraged to employ a variety of alphabets (both cases), numerals, and special symbols when generating a password. This makes brute-force cracking of the code more complicated. It’s also a good idea to avoid using a password that’s easy to guess. Your pet’s name, birthday, phone number, and so on are examples.
Multi-factor authentication can also improve the security of your personal information. Before being granted access to the system, a user must give at least two different login credentials.Â
Everyone should utilize two-step authentication for their online accounts whenever possible. This type of authentication is an option that most banks and major social media platforms provide. As the name implies, two-step authentication entails entering your password and entering a number that only you have access to.Â
Entering your Facebook login details, for example, is the first step. Secondly, Facebook provides you a temporary code through text message or, better yet, an app like Google Authenticator, which you use to log in.
- Social Media Safety Tips
The ease with which cybercriminals can mine data on social media networks makes social media users an easy target. These few safety suggestions will help you avoid becoming a victim of social media scammers:
- Don’t share any critical personal information. If someone requests this information, you can check their credibility by using a reverse phone lookup service, which discloses an individual’s identity based on their phone number.
- Customize your social profile’s privacy settings. That gives you the ability to manage who gets access to your personal information.
- Before you click on a link, make sure it’s secure.
- Install and update your web antivirus software regularly. Hackers will be unable to access information stored on your computer due to this remotely.
- Using Secure Messaging Apps and Social Media
Concerns about data security communicated over the internet have prompted developers to design messaging platforms protected by high-level encryption. Even if the network is breached, hackers will be unable to access the messages, so don’t install sketchy software.
Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp, Silence, and Signal are the top five encrypted chat apps. If you prefer that your conversations are confidential, you’ll need at least one of these apps.
Conclusion
If your personal information falls into the wrong hands, cybercriminals can use them for criminal purposes. As a result, the highest possible protection of such information is required.
Because you are the principal keeper of your data, you should follow the guidelines outlined above to protect the security of such sensitive information. Furthermore, it would be best to safeguard your offline information with the same level of protection that you adopt online. That’s all there is to it!
