The terms privacy and data protection are often used interchangeably, but there is an important difference between the two. Data privacy defines who has access to data, while data protection provides tools and policies that restrict data access. Data protection policy helps to ensure that user privacy requests are carried out by the company.
Data protection policy plays an important role in business operations, development, and finance. With data protection, organizations can prevent data breaches, reputational damages, and better meet regulatory requirements. Data protection solutions are based on technologies such as data loss prevention (DLP), storage with integrated data protection, firewalls, encryption, and endpoint protection.
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5 Data Protection Policy for Data Protection
Here are five data protection policies that can be used to define and protect organizational data.
1. Define Sensitive Data
Each business has a set of sensitive data that are the most important. If such data is lost, stolen, or disclosed it will damage the core of the organization to a great extent. The first step to data protection is to define these sets of data into top-secret categories and provide extra security to them. This data can be legally bound to the organization and will be accountable in case of any theft or threat of it.
2. Determine Data Lifecycle
Of the multitude of data, an organization has, each type of data has a lifecycle. It consists of creating, storing, using, sharing, archiving, and destroying. Not all data needs to be protected at all stages. Data protection can be applied at the right stages where the value of data is most critical to the business. Regulations, policies, and technologies can be utilized at this point to ensure data security.
3. Know the Applicable Data Regulations
Data protection can’t be applied blindly to all data. Each type of data is applicable to a set of regulations and policies. The organization needs to understand which regulations are applicable to the data at different stages of usage. Limitations like firewalls, encryptions, access control, audit logs, and more can be applied to the data according to the rules.
4. Who Can Gain Access to Data
Access to sensitive data should only be granted to employees who need it to perform their job responsibilities. This requires authentication and authorization permissions to access specific data.
Authentication methods can include passwords, PINs, access cards, or biometrics such as fingerprints or facial recognition. Authenticating access to specific data helps IT departments track all changes made to it and attribute those changes to a specific individual.
All authenticated individuals should be assigned permission roles. Not everyone requires modification skills, and only those who need that access should be allowed. Assigning roles such as viewer, editor, and admin can help limit opportunities for sensitive data misuse.
5. Regular Backups and Documentation
Preparing backups for data is important along with access permissions and data security measures. Multiple storage points like cloud, physical storage, servers, etc. can be used to store data regularly. Along with regular backups, proper documentation of data is also important. It helps the business keep track of who is using what data and for what purposes. It also helps the organization to gain an overall picture of data usage in the company.
