Smart businesses know that personal data protection is not just compliance, it is good business. However, with millions of gigabytes stored in your database, things can get complicated. Here are the top 5 data privacy concerns you should know and actionable steps to address these concerns.
Top data privacy concerns to be aware of
This section discusses the top 5 data privacy concerns, their implications, and how you can solve them. Let us dive right into it.
#Concern 1: Data breaches
What are its implications?
A data breach is a security event that results in the unauthorised access or disclosure of personal data. IBM’s data breach report shows that the global average cost of a data breach in 2024 is around $4.9 million. This is 10% higher than last year’s. On average, this amounts to $5 million for the technical sector and more than $6 million for the healthcare sector per breach.
Data breaches are primarily driven by phishing and credential theft. These threats often manifest as emails containing malicious links, the use of social engineering tactics, or vulnerabilities within the system.
Alongside financial loss lies the reputational loss and public backlash across various media. This is also capable of taking away the competitive advantage in your favour. Let us not forget that, losing customer trust has more impact than any fines or penalties.
How to solve it?
A multi-layered security and proactive approach can be a useful strategy. Here are a few ways to implement it.
- Implement security awareness training for your employees to prevent them from falling for phishing or similar security breach attempts.
- Use security breach controls like Firewalls and anti-software
- Discover security threats through risk assessments and security ratings for vulnerabilities
- Implement vendor risk management and data leak detection solutions
- Use multi-factor authentications and role-based access controls
- Implement zero-trust architecture
- Establish strong encryption measures for all internal data and use strong passwords
- Have an incidence response plan
- Conduct regular backups
#Concern 2: Non-compliance with GDPR and other regulations
What are its implications?
Data privacy laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) govern how personal data is used by imposing certain obligations on businesses while also granting specific rights to individuals.
Relatable reads
The key requirements under most global privacy regulations include:
- Provide a privacy policy
- Obtain cookie consent
- Avoid dark patterns for obtaining consent
- Implement data security measures
- Minimise data collection
- Limit personal data use and storage
- Keep records of compliance measures
- Report breaches
- Respect consumer privacy rights
- Service provider and third-party agreements for compliance
- Conduct risk and impact assessments
Relatable reads
Non-compliance with the data protection laws attracts severe fines that can cost you millions. It is up to 20 million Euros or 4% of global annual revenue for EU businesses. For US privacy laws, these fines can range between $2500 to $ 10,000. In addition to these are damages to your brand’s reputation and loss of customer trust.
Relatable reads
How to solve it?
Maintain legal alignment with the requirements and avoid non-compliance risks.
- Provide a detailed and easy-to-understand privacy policy to your customers. Ensure that they are conspicuously available.
- Conduct data audits and keep track of the types of data you collect
- Implement strict security systems to prevent any unauthorised access or data loss
- Honour consumer/data subject rights by providing convenient request mechanisms and timely response
- Ensure compliance of your service providers and third parties by having data processing agreements.
- Implement privacy-by-default principles
- Have an incidence response plan
- Conduct data privacy impact assessments for user data involving high risks such as sensitive data
- Provide a cookie consent banner and cookie policy for your website
- Leverage technology by using Consent Management Platforms and policy generators.
Do you own a website?
If you run a website, there is more to know. Carefully determine your level of compliance using this website compliance checklist.
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#Concern 3: Employee data handling and training
What are its implications?
Most of the user data within an organisation is handled by their employees and sure has the potential to be weak links in data privacy. Human errors are a leading cause of data breaches. Even the most well-meaning can unintentionally cause a data breach by exposing confidential information through simple mistakes such as:
Phishing/email misdelivery
It refers to the use of emails, text messages, and similar methods that contain deceptive links to trick individuals into revealing or gaining access to sensitive and confidential information.
Take a look at this example.
In phishing, attackers pose as trustworthy figures to steal credentials and personal details.
Example
Targeting HRs with fake job applications containing attachments with ransomware.
Misdelivery of emails or confidential files to the wrong recipients can also result in major breaches. An email security risk report by Egress shows that 94% of organisations face email incidents.
Pretexting
Pretexting is when an attacker fabricates a convincing story to manipulate an employee into giving sensitive information. This type of attack focuses on building trust and credibility to achieve its goal. It involves careful research into the target’s life, organisation, job role, etc.
Example
An attacker giving fake calls posing as a government officer requiring sensitive information or credentials for verification purposes.
Unsecured wifi connections
Connecting to unsecured networks or experiencing incidents like stolen work laptops can pose significant threats to an organisation’s cybersecurity.
How to solve it?
Here are some measures that you can adopt to prevent breaches caused by employees
- Mandatory comprehensive cybersecurity training for all employees
- Test employees with simulated phishing emails to help them prepare and identify one
- Establish device and data handling protocols for personal and sensitive data
- Enforce the use of strong passwords and reset them periodically
- Limit access to consumer data based on job roles
- Encourage employees to report breaches, mistakes or suspicious activity. This can reduce the effects significantly
#Concern 4: Vendor and third-party risk
What are its implications?
In the interconnected world we live in, organisations are likely to rely on other business-to-business services or third parties to carry out certain tasks. Some of these tasks include cloud storage, consent management, payroll processing, and chat support.
Even though your organisation has put in place strict privacy protection standards, your service providers might not have similar measures. This could create a potential vulnerability in your organisation’s cybersecurity.
Service providers often have access to your organisation’s sensitive data. A simple example would be, an email service provider having personal information about your potential customers, including their full names and email addresses. Similarly, a payment processing application stores names, card numbers, and other personal details.
Therefore, along with regulatory mandates that require you to work exclusively with privacy-compliant service providers and third parties, it is essential to manage vendor and third-party risks as a critical aspect of data privacy.
How to solve it?
Mitigating vendors and third-party risks requires a strategic approach through every layer of the third-party relationship. Here are a few of them
- Assess the data security practices of a service provider before engaging them
- Give a thorough read of their privacy policy
- Do background checks to determine any past cases of breaches
- Have a data processing agreement with your vendors
- Keep an inventory of the service providers and third parties you have onboarded
- Limit their access to only what is required to perform their duties
- Conduct periodic reviews and risk assessments
#Concern 5: Data minimisation and storage
What are its implications?
Data minimisation is a critical component of almost all data privacy laws. It simply means that companies should restrict their data collection to what is necessary to fulfil a specific purpose. This is a part of the privacy-by-design and default principle under laws like GDPR.
Holding excessive personal data is a privacy concern and can increase the impact of cyber-attacks, risk of data breaches, non-compliance, and other privacy risks.
Data minimisation has a strong connection with purpose limitations and data retention. That is, you should not use the collected data for a secondary purpose not directly related to or disclosed to the consumer. Additionally, limit the retention of data to a reasonable period or until the purpose is fulfilled.
How to solve it?
Here are some ways to reduce the data privacy concerns associated with data minimisation and retention:
- Limit the collection and use of personal data
- Keep your data inventory updated
- Implement data retention schedules
- Regularly review the retention schedules
- Use robust encryption at all stages
- Conduct audits to remove repeated or outdated data
- Allow users to correct or delete their information
How to mitigate data privacy risks? (Effective strategies)
Let us look at some practical and effective ways to safeguard personal and sensitive information handled by your organisation.
Develop a compliance program
Identify the relevant laws that apply to your organisation and create a thorough compliance program that aligns with them. It must be tailored to your organisation’s unique needs.
The program should outline clear principles and procedures for managing personal data lawfully. That includes what data you get, why you get them and how long you keep the data. Therefore conduct data audits and keep an updated data inventory.
Consent management
Take adequate steps to meet the consent requirements under the applicable laws. If you rely on consent as a legal basis for processing personal data, make sure that the consent is freely given, informed, specific and unambiguous. Avoid using dark patterns to obtain consent, or influence the customer’s decision.
If you own a website, ensure that you provide a cookie banner that suits the regulatory needs. Onboard a top cookie consent solution like CookieYes to handle your cookie compliance. This strengthens your consent management and keeps your company compliant with privacy laws around the globe.
Cybersecurity measures
Implement adequate security measures to protect your database from unauthorised access or breach. Train your staff on data protection and compliance requirements. Appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) if required by the law or if you handle a huge amount of personal data.
Moreover, conduct regular impact assessments to discover any security gaps and create risk mitigation plans.
Privacy-awareness culture
Build a privacy culture within your organisation by creating awareness, and conducting training programs and activities for your employees. Pay due diligence while choosing your business partners, or service providers and ensure that their data privacy standards are on par with the current data protection regulations.
Encourage a positive environment where employees feel comfortable reporting any mistakes, suspicious activities or potential breaches.
It is also useful to follow privacy experts or regulatory authorities on social media to keep yourself updated on any regulatory changes or useful technologies.
Limit the data collection and storage
Adopt internal policies to make sure that you collect only enough data required to fulfil the specific purpose and that you will limit its usage.
Conduct periodic reviews to keep the data inventory updated and remove data that is no longer needed. Take the initiative to correct any incorrect or incomplete personal data.
Have a storage schedule that eliminates any unnecessary personal data that you have in your system. The storage period should not be longer than the reasonable period and must align with the regulatory requirements.
Incidence response plan
No organisation can be completely immune to data privacy risks. A single incident can spiral into huge data loss, regulatory fines, loss of reputation and customer trust. This is where an incident response plan comes in as a safety net.
Create a detailed response plan that gives step-by-step instructions on how to react if a data breach occurs. This should include the names of the point of contact, containment measures, and recovery processes. Make sure that your employees are familiar with their responsibilities.
FAQ on data privacy concerns
Data privacy concerns are the risks associated with collecting, storing and processing personal and sensitive information by an organisation.
Data privacy refers to the practice of safeguarding personal data from unauthorised access and ensuring that they are collected, used and stored responsibly.
Safna Y Yacoob is a data privacy writer at CookieYes with a law degree and certifications in the field. Dedicated to simplifying complex legalese, she stays current with data privacy trends through continuous learning.
