Introduction to Data Privacy
In today’s digital world, it is important to understand the value of data and how it helps organization to keep ahead in their transactions. However the data is so valuable that it is critical for organization to value personal data and protect the personal data from misuse and possible data breaches. With increasing cyber threats, protection of personal information is the most critical for everyone and is no longer a best practice but the basic fundamental rights and necessity.
To protect the personal data in digital world, countries have defined frameworks and regulations to empower people in protecting their personal data.
Let’s dig down more to understand what is Data Privacy ?
Understanding Data Privacy
Data privacy refers to the protection and control of personal information, preventing unauthorized access, use, or disclosure of sensitive data. This includes any data that can identify individuals, such as names, addresses, financial records, and more. The focus lies in granting individuals the right to determine how their data is collected, processed, and shared.
Data Privacy term refers to protection of personal data from unauthorized access, use and disclosure of sensitive data. The sensitive data refers to name, images, addresses, financial data, health data and many more confidential personal data as SSN, Government ID proofs, biometrics , online references and other sensitive data.
In today’s digital age, we generate huge amount of digital data through transactions and sharing on social media leaving a digital footprint for ever in this digital world. Hence it is important to understand the need for data protection and data sharing and protect oneself from cyber security harms and breaches leading to damages.
The Significance of Data Privacy Laws
The data protection can only happen if there are regulations and strict regulations that would deter miscreants from doing any damage to personal data, however it may not be that easy. To ensure the data protection, several countries have rolled out Data Privacy laws establishing a legal framework for personal data protection. These laws are aimed at balancing data driven insights for responsible organizations to bring out the changes in digital world leading to more efficiency through innovations but at the same time protect what is to be protected and take users consent for the same.
GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation
One of the most influential data privacy laws is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enacted by the European Union. The GDPR sets high standards for data protection and applies to all organizations processing personal data of EU residents, regardless of the organization’s location.
Key highlights to be mentioned in GDPR can be found below
- User Consent
- Data Subject / User Rights
- Data Breach Notifications
- Appointment of Data Protection Office
Details pertaining to each points are mentioned in coming paragraph
- User Consent: It is important for organizations to obtain user consents related to their data in terms of storing and processing. This is the most mandatory requirements for any organization.
- Data Subject Rights: GDPR provides users / data subjects certain rights as
- Right of access,
- Right to rectification,
- Right to erasure(“right to be forgotten”)
- Right to restrict processing,
- Right to data portability,
- Right to object
These rights are given to data subject to ensure they have control over their data. Organizations have to be ready with solutions to ensure these rights are granted and tracked for each users.
Data Breach Notification: This is one of the most critical data protection rules for organizations. Organizations are obligated to report data breaches to relevant authorities within 72 hours after the breach is identified.
Data Protection Officer (DPO): In order to ensure, data privacy is rolled out successfully in the organizations, the role of DPO (Data Protection Officer) becomes more relevant who oversees the complete privacy framework for the company. Some organizations are required to appoint a Data Protection Officer responsible for ensuring GDPR compliance.
Organization Approach towards Data Privacy Implementation
It is important for organizations to make data privacy a critical part of the business functions and incorporate all departments / business functions and users be a part of data privacy program.
Organization should follow the defined approach
Organizations should start with appointment of Data Protection Officer who will lay down the mechanism for data privacy framework.
Involvement of all business functions in completing privacy impact assessment is important milestone as it can give organization to identify key privacy issues.
Another most important aspect in terms of data privacy is identification of sensitive and personal data in an organization and how they are stored or processed. This lays down the mechanism for obtaining user consent and data subject rights. Use automation solutions as DataForesight to discover all possible sensitive data and take informed decisions.
Consent Mechanisms
While obtaining consent, explain the purpose of the consent and detailed explanation of the consent which will give data subject the complete view of their data being used.
Implementation of Strong Security Controls
Post identification of all data types and result of privacy impact assessments, the another aspect to roll on is implementation of strong security controls and continuous monitoring of the data through automations and process. The best option is to conduct audit every month to see the standard of the data privacy framework and its effectiveness.
Establish Breach Response Mechanism
All regulations mandate to prepare the comprehensive breach response mechanism to notify the applicable authorities well in time and failure to do so will lead to compliance issues both for organizations and users.
The better way to do that is prepare the breach index in an organization to stay proactive and see what are the probable challenging areas that could cause a data breach.
Educate Employees and Users
Educate your employees and users about data privacy best practices. Awareness training helps in building a privacy-conscious culture within your organization and empowers users to protect their data.
Conclusion :
The data is the new oil and entire world is moving on data driven events. We share a lot of digital footprints in this world to enhance our day to day lives and know the details of the subject we want, however it is important to understand the need of data privacy and data security challenges to stay protected and enjoy the digital world.
