We live in a time where it’s hard to go more than a few days without hearing a news story about data breaches and hacks that expose millions of personal information to cybercriminals. People are seeking ways to protect their information online.
It is essential to know how to safeguard personal data in your digital business to meet your legal obligations and to safeguard the privacy of your customers. Here are some suggestions to help you do so.
1. Identify Personal Data
Personal data, as defined in the law on data protection, is any information that identifies an individual or is used to do so. In the digital world it can be a wide range of things from names to email addresses to biometric data. However, a lot of information that might be personal may be excluded from the definition of personal data in certain circumstances. For instance when an organization collects various types of data on individuals and they’re asked to provide their job title it’s probably not personal data since it can’t be used to identify one home person.
Many companies are required to limit the amount of personal data they collect, and that’s typically an excellent thing since it can reduce the likelihood of a security breach. A majority of data protection laws require a higher security level for sensitive personal data than normal personal information. This is because a breach may have more damaging effects or consequences for the data subject.
