The Importance of Data Privacy

Data privacy has exploded in importance lately, especially as high-profile hacks and other types of attacks threaten businesses in never-before-seen ways. The uptick in awareness has caused lawmakers to consider many scenarios that give people more control over their data. Let’s take a look at why data privacy is important and some best practices on how to keep your sensitive data safe. 

Why Data Privacy Matters

It’s no secret that companies have been selling customer data for years, often to “improve user experience” and obviously for profit. On top of that, there are all types of threat actors out there hacking, mining, and scraping for all the data they can get. Data is in demand and when you hold other people’s personal and financial information, you have an ethical obligation to make sure it isn’t mishandled, lost, or stolen. 

It may not always seem like people care. I mean, how many times have you personally been asked to agree to a Privacy Policy without reading a single word of it? For some users, it’s just a hindrance when trying to use a cool new application or service. But, for all of us, that privacy policy is there because the liability of data loss is almost universally with the user. So while a business isn’t going to claim responsibility if they do lose your data (or have it scraped or stolen from their possession), the loss of reputation that comes with data loss can have dire consequences for their ability to run a profitable business.

How to Ensure You’re Doing Everything You Can

For today’s business, data privacy has to be part of any cybersecurity project. It’s one of the main points of any network security expense or initiative: protect sensitive customer and employee data. There are several things even the smallest business can do to protect this data. The best way is to use a three-pronged approach. These three steps are monitoring, implementing the right tools, and training. Let’s briefly go through each to give you a good idea of what you need to know. 

Monitoring

Monitoring isn’t just a guy sitting at a computer watching your network traffic like Tank in The Matrix. This is not only impractical and costly, there is simply too much information coming and going from even the simplest of business networks for any single person to track. What every business needs now are trained professionals using state-of-the-art tools to ensure that not only are your network-attached devices working properly, but that there isn’t any “red flag” code entering your business’ network. With cutting-edge tech and people trained in information system management monitoring your network around the clock, you have an extremely solid resource keeping your data safe for you.

Implementing the Right Tools

There are several tools that your business can use to take control of your network and infrastructure. Some are amped up versions of the tools that protect your home PC and network, while others are business-specific tools that work to protect your network at all times. You’ve got the firewalls you can put in, you’ve got the access control systems, you’ve got spam blockers and content filtering systems. These tools are readily available and usually won’t cost your business a lot of money. Today, a lot of businesses have remote workers accessing network resources, so they’ve moved to a Zero Trust policy. It’s essentially a model of cybersecurity where there is a strict verification process in place. These tools alone may not keep out eager hackers and scammers, but coupled with monitoring and training, you can bet they will do more good than harm. 

Training

A majority of today’s threats are brought on the network through user breach and social engineering. This can happen many ways, but one thing is for certain, if a hacker or scammer is able to waltz onto your network with access to everything without having to breach the network, it makes it a lot harder for you to protect. That is why a comprehensive cybersecurity training strategy has to be one of the core parts of your data security strategy. Today’s phishing tactics and other scam-deployment strategies are getting quite sophisticated, so ensuring your staff knows what to look for is extremely important to keeping the sensitive data your business holds safe. 

Data privacy requires strong security strategies. At Computerware, we can help your business come up with a security platform and provide you with the tools and expertise to help you do everything you can to protect your data and the data of your customers and employees. Give us a call at (703) 821-8200 today to have a conversation with one of our security professionals.