“Data Privacy Day ” is an international effort to empower individuals and business to safeguard data, respect other’s privacy, and to enable trust.
Data privacy deals with the proper handling of sensitive data, being compliant with the data protection regulations and to protect data’s confidentiality. It’s all about how data should be collected, stored, managed, and shared with any third parties.
Billions of people don’t know how their personal information is being collected, used and shared in our digital society. Data Privacy Day is held annually on 28th January. The main aim is to generate awareness about the importance of privacy and highlighting ways in which we can protect our personal information.
Year-round, National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) educates consumers on how we can own our online presence and shows organizations how privacy is good for business. This year, NCSA is encouraging individuals to “ Own Your Privacy ” by learning more about how we can protect our valuable data online, and encouraging businesses to “Respect Privacy”.
Advice for individuals: Own Your Privacy
- Valuing and protecting our personal information
Personal information, such as our location and purchase history have tremendous value to businesses. We should make an informed decision about sharing our personal information with certain businesses by considering the amount of personal information being asked, and weighing it against the benefits we may receive in return.
- Monitoring installed applications
Many applications ask for access to our personal information, such as location, contacts, storage and media (images and videos), before we can use their services. We need to be thoughtful about which applications get access to what information. We should be cautious of applications that ask for information that is irrelevant for the services they are offering. Deleting unused apps and performing regular updates is also important.
- Leveraging privacy settings
Many websites and applications provide privacy and security settings, we should set them to our comfort level of information sharing. Every application and website may have different settings on how the information is being shared and with whom.
Advice for businesses: Respect Privacy
- Protecting collected data
Data breaches not only lead to financial loss, but a loss of reputation and customer trust. Following reasonable security measures to keep customer’s personal information safe from inappropriate and unauthorized access is a must. Making sure that only the relevant data is collected and the information is processed in a fair manner.
- Assessing data collection practices
Understanding which privacy laws and regulations apply to your business. Educating employees of their and organization’s obligations to protecting customer’s personal information
- Transparency builds trust
Being open and honest about how customer’s personal information is being collected and shared can help build trust. Communicating clearly with the customer about what privacy means to the organization and the steps taken to achieve and maintain privacy.
- Keeping an eye on partners and vendors
Organizations are responsible for how their partners and vendors collect and use consumers’ personal information. Privacy is not yet dead but it is under threat. No doubt our privacy is very important to us.
Data Privacy Day is just an excuse to remind us how important our privacy is. Having a dedicated day to celebrate Privacy globally lends further impetus to the larger objective of Privacy awareness and helps bring attention to managing personal data.
