Data Privacy: What is it and How to Protect Your Data?

What is Data Privacy?

Data privacy deals with personal information that is obtained on the web, whether that is personally identifiable information (PII) or personal health information (PHI). It is a branch of data security that focuses on the way that data is handled specifically in regards to consent, notice and regulatory obligations (1). 

Why is it Important?

Data Privacy has become an increasingly important issue for companies to address. Closely held company data is one of a business’ most important assets. Data is useful for mapping company performance, making decisions and solving problems faster, improving overall customer experience and measuring the success of your company (2). It provides market insight and competitive intelligence that can give it an operational advantage in its industry.

Data Breaches Have Consequences

There are a variety of ways that a data breach can affect your company negatively. The first that will come to mind to most people is the financial repercussions of the breach (4).

 

These financial repercussions factor in a few different ways:

  • reimbursing affected clients
  • response efforts for breach
  • investigating the incident.

 

A negative impact that is less notable, but equally devastating is the reputation damage it inflicts on your brand. Regaining customer trust is difficult after a data breach. There will likely be customers lost during that time period as people become much more reluctant to use your company (4). These effects may not be permanent, but the time and cost to repair the damage can be significant, so it is important to not overlook the reputational impact data breaches cause.

The Alarming Rate of Data Breaches

Data breaches have become fairly common in this day and age. In fact, in 2018, it was reported that approximately 1.244 billion people in the US had their data breached. These data breaches resulted in 466 million records being exposed. That year, nearly half (46%) of US firms had reported a privacy breach. And making matters worse, 77% of IT professionals said that they did not have a plan if a cybersecurity incident occurred (3)! With nearly half of firms reporting cybersecurity attacks, there must be an increased sense of urgency, seriousness & awareness given to cybersecurity. Better prevention and resolution plans to buffer attacks require such focus and resolve.

How Can You Protect Your Data?

Now that you understand the negative effects a breach can have on your company, how can you prevent them from happening?

 

Here are a few tips to help secure your data:

 

  1. Employee Access & Education – Employees tend to be the easiest (and first) route for cybercriminals to access your data, so making sure that only authorized employees have access to crucial data is important. In addition, educating your employees about data breaches and the steps that they can take to ensure they’re only clicking on secure links and emails is critical (5). 
  2. Backup Servers – Having backup servers that can replicate your data is a good preventative measure. This will prevent large data loss that could occur from a breach (5). Ransomware attacks (where data is forcefully encrypted and held for ransom) can be alleviated when backup servers are employed.
  3. Obtaining Data Privacy Software – There is a variety of different software, like SiteLock, that you can purchase in order to protect your site against data breaches. The software SiteLock detects and automatically removes malware and other infections. It also has the ability to increase web speed by as much as 50%.

Contact us at 3PRIME to protect your website with SiteLock!

 

Data Privacy isn’t just good policy, it’s brand awareness

Data privacy deals with some of the most important personal information that users can provide online. Obtaining this data is extremely useful for companies, as it factors into a variety of different things that help to improve overall customer experience, determine corporate policies, and business operations. The way this information is being stored and protected is essential for companies.

Cyber attacks that resulted in data breaches have become increasingly common, affecting nearly half of US firms. These breaches can have serious effects on a company’s operations and its brand image. 

Make sure that you have preventative measures and solutions in place so that these types of data breaches don’t happen to you! A byte of prevention is worth 1.244 billion people needing a cure!

 

Sources:

www.varonis.com/blog/data-privacy/

www.towardsdatascience.com/how-important-is-data-for-your-business-c15a35c6935e

www.statista.com/statistics/273550/data-breaches-recorded-in-the-united-states-by-number-of-breaches-and-records-exposed/

www.itgovernance.co.uk/blog/the-damaging-after-effects-of-a-data-breach

www.entrepreneur.com/article/332794

Webinar on 6/25 w/ Forrester: Wearables – The Next Frontier of Mobile

Ever wonder whats next for mobile?  Smartphones feeling old hat? Then why not make a smart hat or hop on the google train and code some GoogleGlass.

TUESDAY 6/25 we have another webinar focused on Google Glass and smart use cases for professionals that need to be hands-free (think policemen, EMTs, surgeons, firefighters, pilots, etc.). Joining us for the webinar will be Sarah Rottman Epps, Senior Analyst, Forrester (I’ve attached two of her reports for your reference).

Link to register (Hey its free): http://www.mutualmobile.com/webinars/google-glass

3PRIME Updates ProjectMEMA.org

This non-profit, founded by a friend of ours in Boston, MA, seeks to make education in Moshi accessible. Through providing education necessities including tuition, essential supplies, nutritional supplements and uniforms when possible, Project MEMA is actively aiding 3 classrooms in Moshi, Tanzania.

In the past 3 years, the organization has grown and was in need of a new website. 3PRIME took there existing content including 5 pages, an excellent logo and a Paypal donate button and rebuilt the website using the WordPress CMS. Take a look!

Instead of a finished website, this rebuild provides a strong platform for the organization to grow its online presence and continue to foster awareness and action.

3PRIME time and expertise is available for businesses new and old, large and small and non-profits of all sizes. One of our long-time clients demonstrates how consistent SEO earns great rankings for his school and church signs manufacturing business

3-Prime Helps Local Company With Online Presence

If you thought it was difficult to manage all your social network profiles, try running a profitable company while also worrying about broken HTML and server crashes.

Sometimes, a company may simply lose track of its online assets, and this is where we come in. 3-PRIME has recently helped a local insurance company take control of its online presence and develop it in important ways that will allow it to increase its rankings and customer base on the Internet. First, we tracked down the company website hosting information, as well as ftp passwords that had been lost. Next, we recovered control panel access and regained the ability to modify and update the site.

After that, we installed a number of important site management tools, starting with Google Analytics, which allowed us to keep statistics on site hits and keywords. We also installed the WordPress engine, in order to make it easier to maintain and update the site. To get our client started, we wrote and uploaded two initial posts on the company’s new blog.

Finally, we wrote a custom PHP script to add search engine friendly links on their homepage to their blog posts. This way, each time our clients add a post on their company blog, the company homepage will be updated with links to the entry, so that visitors will be able to easily keep up to date with news and other updates.

If you’d like to see the end result, click here.

If you want to raise your company’s profile by blogging, contact us and get a personally-tailored quote for your website!

Note to those that have bought from Bestbuy.com

We were notified by Best Buy that the company they use to send emails to their customers had some of their files compromised. Best Buy claims the files only contained customer’s email addresses and that no other information was accessed.

The entire email was well written, upfront and honest. It’s a great example of a company treating their email recipients with respect. Hopefully, nothing serious comes of this breach but as far as public relations go they made a good first step.
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