What is Data Protection, and Why is it Important?

 

Fraud, theft, cyber-attack, "my data has been stolen," or "I have been a victim of internet fraud": these are the words or sentences one hears very often these days as an individual goes online using the internet.

 

Or an organization makes its sensitive data available to be accessed online through the internet. When such incidents happen, these cause severe consequences for businesses and organizations, and government levels.

 

On the other hand, we also hear terminologies like "Data Security "and "Cyber Security." But what are these terms, and why are they so important in today's Information technology? First, let us look at how data security can be breached and how to counter these attacks.

 

In the era of Information, technology is progressing day by day, and innovations are being introduced in IT, such as 5G technology, video conferencing, and IoT (internet of things).

 

Every human being on the face of this planet has now been connected in this global village through the internet locally or globally. As people are getting hitched, they are sharing information through different applications and platforms.

 

Data Security and the Role of Governments:

Locally, governments store their citizens' data such as their National IDs, family tree data, passport information, and educational information. As this is sensitive data, governments cannot afford to let this data be hacked by an individual or a team of skilled personnel known as hackers. That's why governments and organizations think and implement ways for data security that will protect the data from theft and being used in fraudulent activities.

 

That's why all over the world, countries are making laws to protect cyber crimes and to apprehend the culprits involved to keep their valuable data from unauthorized breaches. One of the salient features of these laws is that no business or government can attain data from the user without their consent.

 

Business and Data Security

As more and more businesses are establishing and getting connected locally and internationally, every enterprise is transforming user data digitally, eliminating the need to use paper. Doing this type of digital transformation has its perks. First, it boosts the businesses operations as they are now more productive and quicker in responding to its customers or users as the computing environments have provided endless possibilities for the businesses.

 

But as the data of employees and customers start to grow, the need to monitor and manage better arises for individual businesses. If not properly monitored, the data can quickly go into the hands of unauthorized individuals who can use the data for God knows what fraudulent activities. Businesses usually store data of their customers such as their:

 

• Emails
• Telephone Numbers
• Names
• Addresses
• Credit Card / Debit Card or Bank details

 

This is an individual's sensitive data, and the responsibility of the business or banks is to make sure that as the data grows, the more it gets difficult to monitor as data stored on computers has its benefits as well as downsides such as hardware-related failures, such as computer hard drives malfunctioning and crashing to a point where it is impossible to recover the data stored on it, to cater this on needs to have backup drives intact so that a backup of companies necessary data is saved in case of a hardware failure.

 

Data security is achievable if you keep track of anything that might pose a threat to you. This includes making sure that people you meet online for a business cause are not suspicious. You can use Nuwber or do online research on your own if you find someone showing red signs. Always check the legitimacy of a person before you provide any sensitive details about your business to them.

 

Computer viruses are another major cause of corrupting the data stored on the computer by altering the data stored on the drive and making it useless.

 

Common types of computer viruses are "Adware," which displays unwanted ads on the user's computer and consumes many resources, thus causing lags in serving user requests. "Ransomware" is another dangerous form of computer virus as it alters the extensions of the computer files and leaves a note for the user which states that if you want your data back, contact us and send a huge amount as being told, thus causing a huge setback to the organization financially.

 

This also impacts people losing jobs and, most importantly, affecting the company's reputation and reliability in this competitive world of technology.

 

As the computer helps us atomize the tasks and makes our lives easier, we can not eliminate human interaction with the machine, thus also causing human errors. This is also a significant cause. The most leading cause today is considered in data breaching or data loss. However, this can be overcome by implementing appropriate user controls to restrict employees from accessing data they cannot access.

 

Mobiles and Data Security:

As this is the age of mobiles and with the launch of 5G technology, the organizations have allowed different services to their users online, which users can now easily access through their mobile devices, thus eliminating the need to find a computer and laptop and accessing any service offered or own data information at his own desired time and place.

 

But as the users and organizations are shifting to cloud computing, more and more cyber attacks are being made to hack the user data from their hand-held devices.

 

That's why big companies like Apple and Google are now implementing more and more features with every passing day and every major release of their operating systems. For instance, Apple releases its iOS to all of its devices regularly to make the operating system of its devices more secure and provide more data security to its end users by eliminating the vulnerabilities reported by the security researchers, also known as bugs.

 

The same is the case with Android. Security patches are being released regularly to make the end-user experience more secure. But every mobile company is securing the data of its users by implementing security features like "Fingerprint Sensor," "Face-ID unlock," and 128-bit and 256-bit encryption methods and passcodes.

 

Another way the mobile data security is strengthened by the implementation of "Two-Factor Authentication" system, which is a code system sent to the user's mobile in addition to the passcode so that only the original user can gain access to the desired data after verifying the code sent to him/her on their registered mobile or E-mail address.

 

Conclusion: To summarize the whole story in a nutshell, businesses and organizations should adopt the latest methodologies for data security such as encryption technologies, cloud-based data monitoring tools, network and endpoint security tools to minimize data breaches, regular backups, and risk management policies to make the user as well as companies services and data more secure from unauthorized access.