Data privacy is the protection of an individual’s ability to control who has access to their personal information. The concept of data privacy predates the advent of computers. In fact, public versus private (privacy) are key distinctions used as far back as Aristotle.
The mass use of computing and data storage opened a flood gate of abuse at a much larger scale. In 1974, we see one of the first digital responses with the US Privacy Act passed in hopes to eliminate the risk of the nation’s citizens. In 1996, we see additional controls with HIPPA regulation within the medical industry. While these are sweeping regulations, even when it is not obvious that data privacy is at risk, our society defaults to keeping personal information private.
The importance of data privacy is difficult to overstate. Especially in a world that is entirely digital, there are more ways than ever for someone’s personal data to fall into the wrong hands. Proper data privacy frameworks protect consumers and service providers from identity theft, which affects millions of Americans every year, sometimes uprooting their lives and causing massive harm to their financial and legal status. Data privacy also protects individuals’ physical safety. If a company were to release a consumer’s tracking data to the public, nefarious actors could locate or monitor the consumer, opening them up to avoidable danger. Organizations bear a responsibility to their consumers to comply with both federal and state data privacy and data protection laws. An example of such a law is the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), which states that consumers hold the right to request businesses to disclose the information they collect from their consumers and for what purpose that information is being collected. It is a business’s responsibility to remain compliant with such laws, to both satisfy legal and compliance regulations and to earn the trust of the consumer.
While data privacy is not a new concept, its implementation has rapidly changed as the world adopts more complex technology, multiplying the avenues of risk to sensitive data. Some of these challenges are:
1. Businesses collect an increasing amount of consumer data.
To mitigate these challenges and ensure compliance with data privacy laws, there are some best practices to follow while handling sensitive data, including:
1. Only collecting the personal data that is needed for the specific purpose it intends to serve.What Happens if I Am Not Compliant?
There are a million reasons to raise compliance standards if you are a decision maker at your organization – or 888 million of them if you’re Amazon. Here are some recent regulatory fines that some of the various data protection-centric regulatory bodies have leveled against non-compliant organizations:
1. Facebook was fined $57 million in 2019 by the Irish Data Protection Commission for violating the GDPR. The IDPC ruled that Facebook did not inform its users of their data’s usage and consumption in an adequate manner.Aside from the moral implications of failing to protect consumer data, there are unimaginably strong financial incentives to raise data privacy standards at your organization. The fines are not simply a slap on the wrist – they could destroy your bottom line.
Protecting consumer data is harder now than it has ever been, which places an emphasis on experts who can guide organizations to higher data privacy standards and top of the line regulatory compliance metrics. We typically get called in to assist with data privacy concerns after another consultant firm finished a large engagement for infrastructure or reporting. Often privacy, policy and governance are never part of the 2-3 year roadmap that our clients paid millions to implement. While the shiny new tools (likely struggling with company-wide adoption) are working as designed, the risk to the company has just exponentially increased.