Privacy and Data security: why you need to know the little known ways
Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash
In recent times, there is an increase in the use of digital and technological data bases for saving records, hence, the need for privacy and data security which is essential for ensuring that confidential information is secured. On the web, there are plethora of insecurities and vulnerabilities and it is important that security measures are deployed to secure vast information from hackers or those seek to make profit from such information or blackmail in order to devastate lives for their gain. Privacy and data security can be viewed as a Venn diagram with overlapping significant points that can be used distinctly by businesses, organizations and companies. These concepts are used interchangeably by many people and are both needed to address issues that may arise in securing data and information.
Privacy and Data Security Overview
Privacy deals with having access to data, the guideline for the collection of data and how it should be handled based on its necessity and sensibility. It is majorly concerned with processing and proper handling, storage and usage of personal information with respect to individual’s to personal information. Privacy can be applied to financial information, social security or ID numbers, medical sensitive records, birth-dates, names and as well as contact information. It is the right to freedom from intrusion and prying eyes of people’s information and data.
Privacy is applicable to all sensitive and secret information that organizations, businesses or companies handles, which may consists of customers data, shareholders portfolio, and employee records. This information is vital to an organization’s operation, finances and the development.
Data security concerns the personal information or data of individuals, organizations and how they can be protected from unauthorized access or corruption using encryption in order to know who have access to it and determine the authorize user. It is set up as a strategy to protect data/ information using diverse methods that guarantee data privacy.
This is a practice of securing digital data/information from theft, corruption, unauthorized access and vulnerabilities throughout the entire life cycle. It details the entire aspect f securing the hardware and storage devices, access and administrative control as well as the software application, organizational procedures and policies that ensure data security.
Simply put, it is worthy of note that privacy and data security aren’t the same terms but are two signs of a coin that goes together. Take for example, when using a Google Gmail account, the way Google uses the data provided by you to administer your account can be referred to as privacy while the password provided is known as data security but both work hand in hand to ensure your data/information is properly secured. Data/ information security is a prerequisite for privacy.
Privacy and Data security Best Strategies and Practices
Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash
Encryption: this makes use of algorithm to change normal text characters into unreadable forms or format, encryption keys scramble data is that only authorized users can read them. Data security using the encryption or tokenization method is a defense technique for sensitive volumes of contents by obscuring them as well as using key security management capabilities.
Data Resiliency: this is driven by a data center’s ability to endure and recover any form of failure from the hardware issues to power shortages and other disruptive issues that endanger the data security.
Data Erasure: this strategy is known to be more secured than the standard data on any data storage device completely wiping. It makes use of software to overwrite data and verifies that the data/ information cannot be recovered. Erasing data that aren’t needed is a major requirement of compliance regulations.
Data Masking: Personally identifiable information (PII) to ensure development in the environment that is compliant. With this method, organizations can enable teams to develop applications or train people using the real data.
Access control: this type of data/information security measure entails the limitation of both physical and digital access to critical systems. All computers and devices are protected with the necessary login details and physical spaces can only be entered by authorized person.
Backups and Recovery: This is a measure put in place in case of system failure, data corruption, breach, or disaster in the course of information/ data management. There will be a need for backup of data or a data copy stored using a different format such as a physical disk, cloud or the local network or whatever format available to secure the data.
Authentication and Authorization: this measure is slightly like access controls; authentication is used to identify users before they have access to data or information using things such as passwords, PIN numbers, swipe cards or biometrics and security tokens. The users’ credentials are verified and privileges are applied correctly as part of identity and access management (IAM) solution.
Minimal data collection: this practice ensure that policies direct that only the needed information are utilized and save the bandwidth and storage devices from issues. The increase of data collection more than needed brings huge burdens on the security team. The use of “verify and store” framework can help attain privacy and data security.
Data Inventory: helps to understand what data is available, the processing and handling, the storage system and how privacy can be ensured. Policies formulated should give description of data collection, frequency of usage and scanning, how it is classified in the location identified and acted upon.
Final Words Worthy of Note
Do you know that it is possible to have good privacy strategies and still lacking in good data security techniques?
If data or information collected aren’t in accordance with the prescribed law or not securing the data with adequate and appropriate security measures such as authentication and access management might be a breach of legal compliance.
There is a need for privacy and data security measures, simple solutions to be put in place with compliance to legal standard in order to keep away theft, breaches, and other vulnerabilities that might create threats to surfing the web safely.
