Data privacy is about reminding everyone that their data is theirs and not everything has to be shared. To understand the importance of data privacy one must first understand what data privacy is, then why it is important and then what challenges both users and organisations face when it comes to data privacy.
Data privacy is based on personal information of users and their ability to determine how much and when it is shared with other people and organisations. The personal information is based on location, contact information as well as the behaviour of the individual both online and in the real world. Data privacy is determined by users as they grant permissions to what any software, person, or organisation is allowed to access.
Online users have the ability to exclude data collection and usage monitoring on applications and website. Yet, there are platforms that do not follow regulations, and they collect data without the knowledge of the individual. Without adequate cyber security software, these organisations can experience data breach that result in the loss of a lot of private data from individuals. Data privacy is based on the user’s choice to protect certain information by not granting applications access or the ability to monitor them.
The importance of data privacy is considered in many locations a fundamental human right. Individuals entrust their personal data to platforms and organisations and expect it to be protected through their data protection strategies. The importance of data privacy is highlighted by the fact that criminals can use the confidential data from users to ransom them for money in order to protect their identity.
Another reason as to why data privacy is important is that many entities sell the contact information and other private information to third parties without any consent from the user. This tends to result in unwanted marketing that no user agreed to. This could also lead to users being tracked and restricting their own freedoms and human rights, especially in restrictive or repressive governments.
The importance of data privacy is highlighted by the outcomes and harm that individuals will experience, as well as the harm that organisations will go through. Once a data breach occurs and individuals are harmed the reputation of the organisation is also harmed, that excludes the fines and other legal consequences.
There are many challenges that individual face when they try to protect their online privacy. The first challenge is online tracking with cookies that record their activities while using the website, not all users are always aware that their movements are being tracked.
Another challenge is losing control of their data, as well as the lack of transparency that is associated with different social media pages and applications that require personal information. The information that users input could be shared to other parties beyond the website and users do not have control over it and transparency is lost with a difficult to understand privacy policy.
The last challenge that individuals experience is with social media that fast tracks the finding of people as well as adding information to posts to simplify the locating of individuals. Social media platforms collect individual data and share it with other platforms without informing the users. This increases the challenge of cybercrime attackers to steal information to sell it, commit fraud or ransom the user for the data. The drive behind cybercrime is malicious, and it affects each user.
Organisations have challenges on their own when it comes to data privacy. The first challenge that is experienced is with communication, as they do not clearly and in simple terms communication with users about how they collect and use the data on their platforms and applications.
Another challenge is cybercrime, where attackers target organisations to collect and share the personal and private information. This also rises the challenge of data breaches and implementing security measures to protect the data from cybercrime and data breaches.
Organisations have the challenge of insider threats, where employees or outside contractors have access to confidential data and share it without the thought of protecting the individual from harm. Internal threats occur when sensitive data is not protected.
Data privacy is a crucial aspect for both individuals and organisations. The protecting of user data is a necessity for any person and organisations that is why we at Secured Enterprise protect your business from cybercrime.
Secured Enterprise prioritises data privacy and acknowledges the importance of protecting individual data to the extreme. That is why we tailor and test all our security solutions to offer robust and powerful cyber security solution that are monitored and maintained by trained professionals.