Data protection safeguards information from loss through backup and recovery. Data security refers specifically to measures taken to protect the integrity of the data itself against manipulation and malware. It provides defense from internal and external threats. Data privacy refers to controlling access to the data.  It plays a vital role in business operations, development, and finances. By protecting data, companies can prevent data breaches, damage to reputation, and can better meet regulatory requirements.

In this article, we’ll look at what Data Protection and Data Privacy is and their importance:

Data protection is a set of strategies and processes you can use to secure the privacy, availability, and integrity of your data. It is sometimes also called data security.

A data protection strategy is vital for any organization that collects, handles, or stores sensitive data. A successful strategy can help prevent data loss, theft, or corruption and can help minimize damage caused in the event of a breach or disaster.

Here are key data management aspects relevant to data protection:

• Data Availability: Ensuring users can access and use the data required to perform business even when this data is lost or damaged.
• Data Lifecycle Management: Involves automating the transmission of critical data to offline and online storage.
• Information Lifecycle Management: Involves the valuation, cataloging, and protection of information assets from various sources, including facility outages and disruptions, application and user errors, machine failure, and malware and virus attacks.

Data privacy is a guideline for how data should be collected or handled, based on its sensitivity and importance. Data privacy is typically applied to personal health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII). This includes financial information, medical records, social security or ID numbers, names, birthdates, and contact information.

Data privacy concerns apply to all sensitive information that organizations handle, including that of customers, shareholders, and employees. Often, this information plays a vital role in business operations, development, and finances.

Data privacy helps ensure that sensitive data is only accessible to approved parties. It prevents criminals from being able to maliciously use data and helps ensure that organizations meet regulatory requirements.

Data Protection vs Data Privacy

1.       One addresses policies, the other mechanisms

Data privacy is focused on defining who has access to data while data protection focuses on applying those restrictions. Data privacy defines the policies that data protection tools and processes employ. Creating data privacy guidelines does not ensure that unauthorized users don’t have access. Likewise, you can restrict access with data protections while still leaving sensitive data vulnerable. Both are needed to ensure that data remains secure.

2. Users control privacy, companies ensure protection

Another important distinction between privacy and protection is who is typically in control. For privacy, users can often control how much of their data is shared and with whom. For protection, it is up to the companies handling data to ensure that it remains private. Compliance regulations reflect this difference and are created to help ensure that users’ privacy requests are enacted by companies.

Data Protection Practices to Protect Your Data

When it comes to protecting your data, there are many storage and management options you can choose from:

1. Data Discovery: Before you can protect your data, you need to know what you have and where it is located. This process, known as data discovery, is crucial for identifying sensitive information and determining the best ways to secure it.
2. Inventory and Classification: To begin the data discovery process, you must first take inventory of all the data you have within your organization. This involves identifying the different types of data that you store, such as customer information, employee records, intellectual property, and more. Once you have a comprehensive list, you can then classify each data type based on its sensitivity and importance.
3. Data Mapping: Involves identifying the locations of your data and how it flows through your organization. This helps you understand the relationships between various data sets and systems, allowing you to make informed decisions regarding data protection.
4. Redundancy: One of the primary ways storage technologies protect data is through redundancy. By creating multiple copies of your data and storing them on separate drives or locations, you can minimize the risk of data loss due to hardware failure or other issues.
5. Access Controls: Storage systems with built-in data protection often include granular access controls, allowing you to restrict who can access your data and under what circumstances. This can help prevent unauthorized access and maintain the confidentiality of your information.
6. Backup: Backing up your data is a fundamental aspect of data protection. Regular backups ensure that you can quickly recover your information in the event of data loss or corruption.
7. Local and Offsite Backups: It’s essential to maintain both local and offsite backups of your data. Local backups provide quick access to your information, while offsite backups offer additional protection against disasters such as fires or floods.
8. Incremental and Full Backups: In addition to choosing the right backup location, you should also consider the type of backup you perform. Incremental backups save only the changes made since the last backup, while full backups create a complete copy of your data. Combining both types can help strike the right balance between storage space and recovery time.

d.      Backup Scheduling: To ensure that your backups are always up to date, it’s important to establish a regular backup schedule. This can involve daily, weekly, or even monthly backups, depending on your organization’s needs and the sensitivity of your data.

6.       Snapshots: It offer an additional layer of protection for your data by creating point-in-time copies of your systems and files. These snapshots can be used to quickly restore your data in the event of a security incident.

7.       Instant Recovery: One of the primary benefits of snapshots is their ability to facilitate instant recovery. If your system becomes compromised, you can quickly revert to a previous snapshot, minimizing downtime and data loss.

Reference:

https://cloudian.com/guides/data-protection/data-protection-and-privacy-7-ways-to-protect-user-data/