Data Privacy Is Not Data Security

Personal data has become a lucrative business worth billions to organizations that can extract and refine it, giving them a granular view into customer behavior for marketing and personalization purposes. On the other hand, cybercriminals see this data as a valuable asset that can be sold for profit or leveraged in ransomware and extortion attempts. Data breaches and the rising cost are no laughing matter, which is why protecting consumer and employee personally identifiable information (PII) is critical for any organization. The average cost of a data breach can reach upward of $3.86 million per incident, including costs to recover operations, paying ransoms, and fines from data privacy regulations. Often organizations that handle data start thinking about data compliance and regulatory requirements before thinking about proper data security measures.

For an organization to properly protect its data, securing sensitive information should never be an afterthought — and neither should data privacy. Both data protection and data security need to be a top priority. While they complement each other, there are differences between the two, which we highlight in the chart below.

The measures an organization takes to prevent an unauthorized individual from accessing sensitive consumer PII, employee PII, or intellectual property are data security. While the regulatory and compliance factors of data focus on how to properly manage, collect, share, and delete data at the consumer’s request are data privacy. 

While data security and data privacy have different requirements, gaps in data security can put an organization’s data privacy goals at risk. In the event bad actors access consumer information due to weak cybersecurity, it is impossible for organizations to meet consent, policies, and data deletion requirements that fall under global and U.S. privacy regulations. Implementing strong cybersecurity allows organizations to prevent, detect, and respond to malicious activity that could jeopardize access to sensitive data. 

Many countries and states have differing levels of privacy regulations to protect personal data, and more regulations are being added. How do you know if your company falls within the scope of these new laws? And how can your company be ready with cybersecurity to meet the patchwork of state privacy laws? Tune in to our panel webinar with data privacy experts, You Can’t Protect Privacy Without Security.