Web designers and developers play a vital role in protecting their clients, as well as all the people that are eventually going to use the website you build for your client. That being said, protecting their clients’ privacy is an incredibly important aspect of web design.
Web designers who believe that their work revolves pretty much only around how the website is going to look and work couldn’t be any further from the truth, especially in the state of the digital world today. That being said – in this article, we are going to talk about different ways in which web designers protect their client’s data privacy, so, keep on reading in order to find out.
Security oriented design framework
One of the crucial steps that have led to an increase in online security in the past few years came into effect in 2019, and it is called The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This regulation was made in order to offer some stronger rules when it comes to data protection, hence heavily impacting how web designers do their work.
All of this basically means that web designers need to familiarize themselves with the General Data Protection Regulation first in order to be qualified for their line of work due to the fact that this regulation lays down rules on how customer’s digital privacy should be treated. While the regulation was first put into place by the European Union, it undoubtedly affects digital properties pretty much all over the world.
Privacy-first approach
Now, what does this mean when it comes to actual practice? As experts on web design over at https://www.envisagedigital.co.uk/ explain, it’s vital that designers assess building their clients’ websites while being focused on a privacy-first approach. This approach is generally known as the Privacy by Design framework.
Privacy by Design basically means that data protection should be heavily incorporated within technology design. The very basic principle of Privacy by Design, which is also enclosed in the GDPR, includes various measures such as mandatory data encryption, anonymization, user authentication measures, as well as the technical implementation of the right to consent and object among other things.
The privacy should never be compromised over customization
Personalization is without a doubt really important these days since it helps businesses to serve consumers better regarding their services and products, while also being able to stand out from the crowd – which is vital in the oversaturated market of today. All of this customization does come at a certain cost.
In order to create an extensively personalized design, a web designer needs to obtain a significant amount of personal data from users, in order to use it so that they can provide them a more tailored experience.
That being said, the goal of website design is to retrieve as much personal data as necessary and possible without further affecting website security, which can, oftentimes, end up being a compromise between customization and privacy. When it comes down to such compromises – privacy should always be an absolute priority. Due to the fact that the more data a company obtains means that the more data is going to need to be kept safe, choosing customization over privacy requires more complex security measures, which boosts the possibility of something being overlooked.
Collaboration with developers is the key to privacy
In order to create a secure website for their clients and users as well, web designers need to collaborate with web developers when they are building the website. Before GDPR, web designers needn’t really need to work with developers, basically, their primary concern was the front-end, and the developers were the ones that were focused on the back-end. Nowadays, this is not the case, it’s optimal that the web designer and developer work together in order to decide what kind of data should be both collected and retrieved, used and how it can be protected best.
Collaboration between the web designer and web developer needs to be based both on how the website is going to look and perform regarding visuals and functionality, as well as how the security and the user’s personal data is going to be managed and secured. Basically, it all boils down to protecting both the users and the client.
Paying attention to front-end
In the past, the vast majority of hackers have primarily focused on the back-end, nowadays, the front-end is no longer all that safe from attacks since they are able to take advantage of external web applications as well as from microservices that are connected to a website.
This is why web designers need to pay extra attention to APIs, HTML5, iframes, cookies, as well as Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. All these mechanisms do still have their security vulnerabilities, which means that the web designer needs to be extra security-conscious.
To wrap things up
In the end, it all boils down to the fact that web designers are definitely well equipped with all that it takes for your website to be as secure as it can be. So, be sure to look for all that your web designer uses in order to achieve a good level of security before hiring.
