Data is getting more valuable than ever. There are countless ways on how it can be captured, used, and reused. In doing such, data generates great value and benefits to humans.
With the evolution of data usage, skills and opportunities for retrieving different types of personal data are also changing quickly. Unauthorized or careless processing of data can affect the lives of people and organizations. This is why employing data protection policy is very important.
Data protection policy is a security policy that aims to protect the rights and privacy of individuals. It designs, implements, guides, monitors, and manages security of an organization’s data. This ensures that the data are properly stored, consumed and managed within the organization’s core infrastructure, offsite location or at a cloud service. The main goal of data protection policy is to ensure the security and integrity of data irrespective of its physical or logical location.
Importance of Data Protection Policy
1: Prevents Financial Loss
One of the importance of data protection policy is it saves your company from experiencing financial loss. As data is known to be an essential corporate asset that needs to be kept secured, protecting it is paramount to your business.
Data compromise may lead to sales loss, fines, or monetary judgments. It may also cause indirect effects to your company such as a drop in investor confidence or losing your customers to competitors. Lack of data protection magnifies negative results.
2: Compliance with Regulations
The need for data protection policy is also highlighted in the recent spate of regulations in different parts of the world. Regulatory boards have been imposing new protocols on electronic communications and stored data. Noncompliance of businesses may suffer consequences.
Some countries file criminal liabilities to company executives who fail to comply with laws regarding electronic communications and documents. In these regulations, it is defined what information has to be retained, for how long, and under what conditions.
Meanwhile, some laws are designed to guarantee the privacy of the information contained in documents, files, and databases. Loss of vital data can violate these regulations and may subject the corporation to fines and the managers to certain legal actions.
3: Increased Productivity
Another importance of data protection policy is it increases your organization’s productivity. Loss of critical information may reduce overall productivity since employees have to handle time-consuming issues without the help of computer databases.
Aside from this, data loss may also cause application failures, making it hard for employees to finish their tasks. A poor data protection strategy may leave people waiting for extended periods while systems are being restored after a failure. During that idle time, employees may be working less than expected, further diminishing their productivity levels.
4: Protect Clients’ Data
Data protection policy aims to protect not only a person’s data, but the fundamental rights and freedoms of the people that are related to that data. This policy ensures that the persons’ rights and freedoms are not being violated.
In addition to this, data protection policy also safeguards your data from being accessed by third parties. Some of the key information stored by businesses includes your name, address, phone number, email, bank details, health information, etc. By protecting important and sensitive data, you can avoid being a victim of identity theft, phishing scams or other types of fraudulent activities.
5: Fair Consumer Practices
Data protection regulations are essential for guaranteeing fair consumer practices and provision of services. This means that personal data can’t be sold freely to others, giving your clients greater sense of privacy.
6: Minimize Downtime
Customers are expecting businesses to be available at all times. In a globally competitive market today, customers do not tolerate downtime. To prevent this from happening, businesses deploy extensive data protection policies. This ensures that vital data are kept secured and uncompromised regardless of their location.
Swift Systems
Swift Systems is a full-service Information Technology company located in Maryland. We have an experienced team of IT specialists that provides clients with high quality IT support at a fixed monthly cost. We put into place a data protection policy to ensure that we gather, store and handle data fairly, transparently and with respect towards individual rights.
For reliable IT managed services, Swift Systems are the only call you need to make. Contact us today to discuss your requirements!