Today on the 28th of January, we celebrate data privacy day. Data privacy day (US) or data protection day (EU) has the goal to raise awareness of the importance of data privacy and protection. This day also celebrates the first legally binding international treaty concerning the protection of personal data, which was signed on the 28th of January back in 1981.
We at Nerd as a Service try to deliver the best quality services. Making sure the data of our customers and employees is safe and sound, is a very important part of that high quality promise. Let’s take look at what data privacy actually is and why it is so important.
Data privacy is about how certain types of data should be handled within organizations. This does however, depends on the relative importance of the data in question. Would you be harmed if your name is shared during a introduction? Probably not. But it becomes more personal when your social security number, medical records and financial records are up for grabs. This can lead to, for example, identity theft.
With data we do not only mean personal data about customers and/or employees. But also data that makes sure the organisation operates everyday. For example data used in research and development or data regarding investments and other financial data. You wouldn’t want your direct competitor to get their hands on that valuable data about your organization.
No they are not! They do complement each other though. You can not ensure the privacy of your data if i you don’t have the right technical protection for it. You can say that data protection is a technical issue and that data privacy a legal issue.
Data protection is protecting your internal data or your customers data against unauthorized access. Data privacy is to determine who actually has access and who can give access to others.
First of all, for legal reasons. On the 25th of may in 2018 the GDPR, The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, became reality. This made sure that organizations cannot get away with just thinking and saying that their and their customer’s data is safe. It is now a legal requirement, which means some organizations must rethink the way they protect the data and secure the privacy of personal or customer data.
Furthermore, data protection is becoming a requirement for customers. They expect you to handle their data with great care and thus expect their data to be private and secure. If the data of your customers is not safe and private it can be stolen by unauthorized parties like hackers.
If it does get stolen, it will harm the organization’s reputation and the public opinion about your organization will shift. So it is better to be known as a organization which keeps personal data secure and private.
As you can read, data privacy is a very important subject for many different reasons. It is certainly not something you should take for granted. It can be hard to rethink the things that looks like they are set in stone for your organization, but it is certainly not impossible.
If you are interested to read more about data privacy and protection, go ahead and read about how we helped Foleon & Hillbrook get their ISO 27001 certification.