Data is your organization’s most valuable asset. The right kind of data will help you understand your customers, identify new opportunities and threats, streamline business processes, and make better decisions.
Knowing these facts, you need to implement robust measures to protect your data from unauthorized and malicious parties, to ensure that it complies with all applicable regulatory requirements. But all of this can be easier said than done.
Most organizations face several challenges when it comes to data privacy and protection. These challenges may be relevant to your organization as well. Let’s take a look at three of the most common challenges and discover how a vDPO from an expert cybersecurity firm like Inspira can help you mitigate them.
3 Common Challenges to Data Privacy and Protection in Enterprises
All organizations understand the value of data. But many of them struggle to capture this value because they are unable to protect it from compromise or damage. Still others fail to ensure data privacy, which then often results in regulatory fines, reputational harm, and damaged customer relationships. All these issues are the result of these three key challenges:
1: The exponential growth of enterprise data
In the modern digital economy, data is created in vast volumes, in huge varieties, and at incredible velocities. Per some estimates, the volume of data created and consumed worldwide has gone up from 2 zettabytes (ZB) in 2010 to a staggering 64.2 zettabytes in 2020. Enterprises alone collected over 1 petabyte (PB) of data in 2020. And in just two years, their data volumes doubled to 2.025 PB. Simply put, today’s enterprise data is big data. And it’s only going to get bigger in future.
If your organization also creates, collects, or processes large data volumes, you may find it challenging to manage and protect data and ensure
privacy. This is because the larger the data estate gets, the more difficult it becomes to see where the data resides, understand what form it resides in, assess which data is at-risk, and uncover who can access it – all of which make it harder to implement adequate controls to protect data privacy.
2: The complex and expanding regulatory landscape
Many countries have implemented regulations to govern how organizations collect, process, use, and even dispose of data and personally identifiable information (PII). Some of the most well-known privacy regulations are the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), USA’s California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018.
Countries that are not traditionally well-known for their strong stance on data privacy and protection are also stepping up their efforts in these areas. One of the best and most recent examples is India. In August 2023, the country introduced the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (DPDPB) to Parliament that will cover all India-based and international companies that process the digital personal data of Indian residents,. The bill intends to address the ongoing problem of companies misusing and exploiting this data and includes many important provisions to define personal data, permit data processing by individual consent, create a Data Protection Board of India, and more.
Apart from country-level laws, data privacy regulations have also emerged at industry and sectoral levels. Examples include:
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to protect the sensitive healthcare data of U.S residents
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) to protect confidential cardholder data
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) which requires U.S. financial companies to safeguard their customers’ sensitive financial data
All these laws include strict requirements that govern how companies collect data and protect the rights of data subjects. These rules can be overwhelming, especially for companies with fewer compliance resources and small risk management departments, affecting their ability to ensure data privacy.
3: Human weaknesses and errors
Humans errors and carelessness are a significant challenge to organizations’ data privacy and protection goals for many reasons. For example, clueless employees can use weak passwords, assuming that the password will prevent unauthorized access to their devices and accounts. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, passwords are not the most secure way to safeguard information since they can be easily stolen on compromised, resulting in breaches. In fact, in 2022, 81% of hacking-related data breaches were the result of weak or stolen credentials.
In addition to passwords, other human-related issues like social engineering attacks and account misuse also affect data protection and privacy. Some people can also delete or compromise data, while others can prevent organizations from protecting data privacy by:
• Falling for phishing scams
• Clicking on dodgy links
• Sharing sensitive information via insecure means like open WiFi networks
• Leaving information where it can be easily accessed by unauthorized or malicious parties
Organizations must be aware of these challenges and implement robust controls to mitigate their potential impact. But again, this is not easy to do, particularly when too many people and devices are involved, when teams are geographically-distributed, and when overall cyber hygiene among people is poor.
Mitigating Data Privacy Challenges with a Virtual Data Protection Officer from Inspira
If your organization is currently grappling with any of the above data privacy challenges, here’s some good news: you can mitigate these challenges with a virtual data protection officer (vDPO) from Inspira. Many companies are mandated to appoint a DPO by one or more data privacy regimes. Among them, a large number do not have the budget or wherewithal to hire skilled – not to mention expensive – DPOs in-house. For these entities, our vDPO services
provide a great option, not only to mitigate common privacy/security challenges but also to satisfy regulatory requirements.
Inspira’s DPOs are data privacy and security experts whose main goal is to ensure that your organization processes personal/sensitive/confidential data in compliance with all applicable data protection regulations.
Our vDPO service will empower your organizations to implement and maintain a robust data protection and privacy strategy. With our experts working with you and for you, you will better understand data protection laws and the common challenges to data protection and privacy. They will act as a point of contact for regulatory authorities, spearhead incident response and planning, and conduct data privacy impact assessments (DPIA). IN addition,
they will:
• Oversee your firm’s data protection strategy
• Lead education programs for employees to ensure data privacy and compliance at every level
• Conduct audits to assess and strengthen your compliance posture
In short, Inspira’s vDPO will take charge of all aspects of data privacy within your company so you can effectively safeguard your data, protect your employees and operations, comply with regulations, avoid costly regulatory fines and legal actions, and preserve your reputation.
Conclusion
Where there’s data, there are data-related challenges. Inspira’s vDPO service is a cost-effective and flexible proven way to mitigate common challenges and comply with privacy regulations. Contact us at marketing@inspiraenterprise.com to know more about this proven, results-focused offering that’s designed to help you secure your data and maintain regulatory compliance.
