Understanding how to ensure data privacy is imperative among modern organisations. The world’s largest enterprises spend millions of dollars on cybersecurity services and security infrastructure solutions because they realise the importance of establishing (and incorporating into business operations) strategic data-protection safeguards that will enable them to protect their clients’ and customers’ data, among others.
Data privacy and data protection (also known as data security) are related and complementary concepts. They work hand in hand to secure personal data. Without clear data privacy guidelines, data protection may not prevent unauthorised data access. Likewise, what is a data privacy policy without data protection measures? Data privacy policies are pointless if they are not enforced.
What Is Data Protection?
Data protection refers to the mechanisms that enforce data privacy guidelines. They are the administrative, physical, and technical controls and measures organisations employ to ensure personally identifiable information, personal information, and sensitive data remain available only to authorised individuals and inaccessible to everyone else.
- Administrative: Administrative measures include designating a security officer and a data protection team, training employees on how to ensure data privacy and what their roles are, and creating standard operating procedures for data recovery and business continuity if data is lost, corrupted, or breached.
- Physical: Physical measures include installing commercial security surveillance systems, using an access control system that tracks and restricts entry with biometrics, limiting physical access to local servers and storage media, and securing the organisation’s physical attack surface. Some enterprises build a secure data storage facility onsite with the help of data center construction management and data center maintenance professionals.
- Technical: Technical controls include the use of data encryption, firewalls, anti-malware software, log-in screens, and virtual private networks.
What Is Data Privacy?
Data privacy refers to the guidelines and policies that define who has access to the personal data of clients or customers. Personal data includes the following:
- Personally identifiable information (PII): This information can identify a person. It includes the social security number, Emirates ID number, driver’s licence number, passport number, facial biometrics, and fingerprints.
- Personal information (PI): This is information associated with a person. It includes name, residential address, phone number, and email address.
- Sensitive data: Sensitive data is highly confidential information. It includes medical information and credit card, debit card, and bank account records. Leaked sensitive data can cause the most harm.
Why Is Data Privacy Important?
Data privacy (with data protection measures) is important to your clients and customers because it keeps their personally identifiable information, personal information, and sensitive data secure and away from the hands of unscrupulous elements with criminal intent.
Data privacy—again, with data protection—is even more critical to business organisations. Compliance with regulations is particularly important because violations can lead to hefty penalties.
Consider the tremendous EUR 1.2 billion fine levied by the Irish Data Protection Authority (IE DPA) on Meta (i.e., Facebook) in 2023 or the EUR 746 million fine issued to Amazon by the National Commission for Data Protection (CNPD) of Luxembourg in 2021.
UAE enterprises also need to take heed. Violating the UAE data privacy regulations encapsulated in the UAE Personal Data Protection Law can lead to penalties ranging from AED 500,000 to AED 5 million.
Data leaks and breaches also lead to restoration, resolution, and restitution costs.
Target experienced a data breach in 2013, exposing customers’ credit cards to fraudulent charges. The American superstore ended up paying a $10 million settlement to angry customers who filed a class action lawsuit and $19 million to Mastercard to cover the losses of adversely affected financial institutions.
Enterprises in the Middle East, in particular, need to take data security and privacy seriously. The global average cost of a data breach, according to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach 2024, is $4.88 million, but in the Middle East, this is pegged at $8.75 million, exceeding the global average by 79%.
There is a general upward trend in data breach costs. Globally, the cost of a breach is higher by 9.7% in 2024 than in 2023 ($4.45 million) and by 12.2% than in 2022. The 2024 figure for the Middle East is 8.43% higher than the region’s data breach cost in 2023 ($8.07 million) and 17.3% greater than what it was in 2022 ($7.46 million).
Aside from the direct costs associated with fines and reimbursements, data protection and privacy lapses can lead to the decline of stock prices, loss of customers, and lasting brand and reputation damage.
Clarifying what is data privacy in healthcare, finance, retail, education, government services, and other crucial industries is especially important. Institutions in these industries are privy to highly confidential, sensitive information.
If access to such data is not controlled or weak safeguards allow breaches, such sensitive data could be erased, altered, and used for nefarious purposes.
Fortunately, there are technologies that can help organisations safeguard and secure their data. Enterprises can significantly cut the cost of a data breach through advanced security measures, including the use of systems layered with artificial intelligence capabilities.
According to IBM, organisations that extensively use AI-powered systems in prevention workflows, such as attack surface management, red teaming, and posture management, cut their data breach costs by $2.2 million.
Proactively Protect Personal Data
What is data security and privacy? These are a core business process concerned with protecting business data, primarily customers’ and clients’ personal data. Data privacy refers to the policies that guide the handling of personal data, while data protection pertains to the mechanisms that enforce data privacy policies. Both data privacy policies and data protection mechanisms are necessary to secure personal data.
Data protection and privacy are important. Data breaches and violations of data security and privacy laws lead to steep fines and substantial restitution costs, among other adverse consequences.
Organisations proactively secure the personal data of clients and customers to avoid these costs and negative consequences. One cost-effective strategy is to work with a systems and technology orchestration specialist who can incorporate AI-enhanced systems into data-breach prevention workflows.
MVP Tech is a systems and technology integrator offering AI-powered systems and other next-generation solutions to counter modern problems like data protection and privacy for government agencies, energy companies, financial institutions, and other types of enterprises.
Contact us so we can walk you through our services and systems integration solutions that will help you secure and protect your data.
