Data protection and data privacy are two different terms that most people use interchangeably. Data protection provides policies and tools that restrict access to the actual data. However, data privacy outlines who can access the data. Compliance regulations are meant to ensure that all user’s privacy requests are met by companies. On the other hand, a company’s responsibility is to protect private user’s data including accrued expenses vs. accounts payable info. This post is about the differences of data protection, data privacy and their importance in an organization.
Data Protection Does Not Ensure Data Privacy
While data protection is centered on protecting assets from unauthorized access, data privacy defines who can access the data. It is safe to say that data protection is more of a technical control, while data privacy is mostly a legal matter. One is not equivalent with the other, and both are needed to work together to be effective.
Why Is Data Protection Important?
Any organization or company that handles, collects or stores sensitive data needs a data protection strategy. An effective strategy can prevent data loss, corruption, theft and help to mitigate damage that may occur when a data breach happens.
Principles of Data Protection
These principles help to protect data and make it available under all circumstances, and cover operational data backup. The principles also include business continuity and disaster recovery, which involves implementing aspects of data availability and data management. Below are the aspects of data management relevant to data protection.
- Data availability – Ensures a user has access and can use required data to do business even when the data is damaged or lost.
- Data lifecycle management – Requires the automation of transmition of critical data to online and offline storage.
- Information lifecycle management – This involves cataloging, valuation, and protecting information assets from different sources including disruptions, and facility outages, machine failure, user error, malware and viruses.
Why Is Data Privacy Important?
Data privacy is usually applied to personal identifiable information (PII) and personal health information (PHI). This includes medical records, social security numbers, names, contacts and birthdates information.
Data privacy ensures that only authorized persons can access sensitive data in an organization. It prevents unauthorized use of data and helps to ensure that companies meet the regulatory requirements.
What is Data Protection Regulation?
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that is tasked with setting guidelines for collecting and processing personal information for people living in the EU. The regulations apply to all websites regardless of their location. These regulations have to be followed by sites that attract residents of the European Union (EU).
The main purpose of the regulations is to give European citizens more control of their personal data. The GDPR simplifies the regulatory environment for citizens and businesses in the EU so that they can benefit fully from the digital economy.
Endnote
Understanding the differences between data protection and data privacy is vital for a business owner. The differences are not clear to most people who use both terms interchangeably.This knowledge is beneficial as it protects your organization from being sued by people who are your clients and financial loss.
