Data privacy vs data protection

If your organisation handles employee, customer, user, or shareholder data, you’ll likely have already heard about the importance of data privacy and data protection. However, you might not know how these terms differ, or why they’re so crucial to your organisation’s success. When you want to protect your data from bad actors and ensure authorised users have access to key information, you can benefit from knowing the differences between ‘data privacy’ and ‘data protection’, and the ways they benefit each other.

Find out more about data privacy and data protection, why they’re important, and how you can effectively implement them in your business.

7 DIFFERENCES YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT DATA PROTECTION VS PRIVACY

Suppose your organisation is trying to implement data-protection and data-privacy protocols and strategies successfully. In that case, you can benefit from knowing some of their primary differences and learning more about how they work in tandem. As you better understand the differences between data protection and privacy, you can ensure you don’t overly rely on one over the other. Alongside more information on their differences, you can use primary facts about protection and privacy to better guard your organisation.

Some of the main differences between data protection and data privacy can be found below:

1. DATA PROTECTION AND PRIVACY HAVE DIFFERENT RESPONSIBILITIES

If you’re interested in adding data protection and data privacy, it’s crucial to understand the responsibilities of both. The latter is responsible for meeting various regulations set by the industry or government, protecting your company from legal trouble. Alongside data privacy’s role in guarding against legal risk, it also clarifies policies about data use when it’s shared with your organisation.

While data privacy is responsible for policies and regulations, data protection establishes mechanisms that guard data. These mechanisms often include procedures and tools designed to enforce various regulations and policies. With data protection in place, your organisation will have the tools you need to prevent bad actors from accessing and using your data.

2. HAVING DATA PROTECTION DOESN’T GUARANTEE DATA PRIVACY, AND VICE VERSA

Putting a data-protection plan in place doesn’t guarantee you’ll have data privacy. Likewise, strong data-privacy protocols won’t guarantee you’ll have effective data protection. For example, you could put in place data-privacy guidelines and still struggle to block unauthorised users from accessing your data, due to a lack of data-protection protocols. Furthermore, you might also have data-protection protocols, but leave your sensitive information vulnerable to unauthorised users, due to a lack of data-privacy standards.

Since you can’t have one without the other, you need data privacy and data protection to secure your data. By using both, you can put in place the technical and legal controls required to guard your data from bad actors.

3. DATA PROTECTION AND PRIVACY HAVE DIFFERENCES IN SAFETY GOALS

Note that data privacy and data protection give your organisation different types of safety. Since data privacy regulates who has access to your organisation’s data, it protects data from being sold or shared by a bad actor. This safety from sales comes down to ensuring that only trusted users have access to data. Because the selling of data can be very profitable and can often come from an internal threat, such as a disgruntled employee, data-privacy policies are essential.

While data privacy provides greater safety against unauthorised sales, data protection focuses on providing safety from hackers. It puts in place the tools and procedures needed to stop hacks from compromising data security. By knowing the types of safety you’ll receive from data privacy and protection, your organisation can better set up the appropriate policies for how to deal with the many kinds of data intrusions that could affect information safety.

4. ORGANISATIONS SHOULD QUESTION DATA-PRIVACY REQUIREMENTS BEFORE IMPLEMENTING DATA-PROTECTION PROTOCOLS

Before your organisation puts any data-protection protocols in place, you must evaluate what data you’ll need to gather from your customers or users. Whether your organisation collects payment, proprietary, or personal identification information, data-protection concerns come after data-privacy concerns. Since data protection focuses on data that’s already been collected and stored, you first have to evaluate the data you want to gather initially.

As your company looks to create data-protection protocols, you can begin by questioning what data you need to gather and what you can dismiss. By starting with your data- privacy needs, you can set up more appropriate data-protection standards. As a result, your organisation can save time by not wasting it on unneeded protections, and can make your required data-security mechanisms more effective.

5. ORGANISATIONS MUST HAVE SECURITY TO PROTECT THEIR PRIVACY

When your company gathers data from your users and customers, you can’t put data-privacy protocols in place and expect it to secure data. Since data privacy usually only covers how organisations can lawfully collect data and what they can do with it after it’s been stored, it doesn’t do much to secure the information your organisation gathers.

Due to data privacy’s lack of control over information security, responsible organisations must also have data protection. With data-protection mechanisms in place, your organisation can stop bad actors from unlawfully accessing data. The symbiotic relationship between data privacy and data protection means that for true data privacy, your organisation must also have data security.

6. COMPANIES ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR PROTECTION, WHILE USERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR PRIVACY

When your organisation collects data from your users and customers, you need to know who’s responsible for controlling data privacy and data protection. During the collection and storage of data, users are often in control of data privacy, while organisations maintain data protection. Since users typically control what data they’re sharing and who they’re sharing it with, they have a significant role in data privacy.

Though users play a significant role in data privacy, your organisation is primarily responsible for protecting the data users have shared with them. Since users will often indicate the level of security they want over their data, your organisation must then put in the appropriate data-protection mechanisms required to meet those security expectations. If your organisation meets those responsibilities, you can avoid facing legal problems and credibility issues.

7. WHO ORGANISATIONS PLAN TO GIVE DATA ACCESS TO DIFFERS FROM WHO CAN ACTUALLY ACCESS THE DATA

When you’re trying to differentiate data protection and data privacy, it’s crucial to understand that data privacy focuses on determining who should or shouldn’t be authorised to access data. As your organisation determines who should be permitted to access information, you’ll change your data-privacy standards. Though deciding who should be authorised to access data is essential, this measure won’t fully protect information from unauthorised access.

Since data privacy doesn’t fully protect information from unauthorised parties, data security is the essential next step. Essentially, data privacy sets the standards for access, and data security makes it possible for those standards to be enforced.

TIPS FOR IMPLEMENTING DATA PRIVACY AND DATA PROTECTION

Since data privacy and data protection go hand in hand, you will likely want to implement them properly at your company. Review some of the primary tips for implementing effective data privacy and data protection standards below:

1. PROFESSIONAL EXPERTISE IS A MUST

Before your organisation establishes data-privacy and data-protection standards and mechanisms, it’s essential to work with people who have professional expertise in the field. Since adequate data privacy can help organisations avoid legal and credibility troubles, many organisations turn to experts to implement data-privacy standards. For example, your organisation might employ experts from fields such as policy, engineering, and law to create or check data-privacy solutions.

Likewise, you can consult IT professionals and other data-security experts to build your organisation’s data-privacy solutions. Since data protection is necessary to protect critical information and your organisation’s operations, it’s valuable to bring in these experts to ensure adequate security mechanisms. By turning to experts in data privacy and data protection, your organisation can protect data in the most secure way possible.

2. LIMIT EMPLOYEE ACCESS TO SENSITIVE INFORMATION AND DATA

One of the primary causes of companies having data breaches and not meeting regulations is human error. Due to the risk of human error, it’s often a good idea to limit employee access to sensitive data. When fewer people have access to your data, you’ll face less risk from mistakes or improper use of information.

Of course, you’ll still want to give employees access to the data they need to do their jobs. As you determine how much access you want to give to your employees, consider who requires different pieces of data and how you plan to monitor data usage. By only providing access to those who actually require your data and training your employees to handle it properly, you can reduce the risk of human error.

3. AUTOMATE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

Besides limiting data access to reduce mistakes, you can also automate much of your data-protection and privacy processes to lower the chance of human error. With a data- privacy and data-protection solution, it’s simple to automate many of your security and compliance tasks. For example, automating your data-classification processes can free up your staff for other functions and reduce classification mistakes.

Since it’s not always easy for staff members to remember every regulation and compliance law they need to follow while conducting daily tasks, data compliance automation can make their jobs easier. As a result, your employees won’t have to worry about meeting compliance standards so often, and won’t be put in a position where they’re likely to make mistakes. In the same way, automated protection solutions can reduce the chances of data breaches and ensure that various tasks get completed without error.

Taken from https://blog.box.com.