How You Can Do Your Part During Data Privacy Week

Next time you are feeling underappreciated at home or undervalued at work, take solace in the fact that entities around the world would love to have access to your personal data. Feeling more valuable yet? Thousands of hackers around the world work around the clock to steal, obtain, share, and sell personal data of people just like you. Feeling used yet?

Data Privacy Week (January 21-27) is the perfect time of year to take charge of your data. Formerly, Data Privacy Day since 2008, the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) expanded into Data Privacy Week in 2021. Why? Because your personal data is that important.

So Data Privacy Week is a concerted effort to spread awareness about online privacy. If you agree that data privacy should be a priority both for individuals and organizations – then welcome to the cause.

The week’s goal is twofold:

• To help citizens understand that they have the power to manage their data.
• To help organizations understand why it is important that they respect their users’ data.

The international week features events and educational initiatives to focus on raising awareness among users and businesses of the importance of protecting the privacy of their data online. This has become even more important as social networking has increased in popularity over the years, as has the constant ongoing threat of security breaches.

Data Privacy Week‘s goal is to educate and empower businesses, consumers, and families with the knowledge and best practices to better protect themselves from hackers, viruses, and malware that can put their information as risk. Data Privacy Week brings together, not just technologists, but government officials, educators, those involved with nonprofits, as well as leaders from all industry sectors.

How Can You Do Your Part

So what can you do about data privacy? If the security of your data and privacy matters to you, Data Privacy Week is a great time to start actively protecting your info. Mailchimp, 23andMe, and even Okta all learned the hard way. It’s in the best interest of every business and organization to practice good data stewardship or they’ll be the next lead story on CNN or the next big headline in the New York Times. Whether it’s your bank, doctor, pharmacy or even workplace, encourage them to protect your data sufficiently. Don’t feel powerless to do so.

•  Your older equipment is a prime target for data piracy. Onsite or offsite data sanitization services are available including physical destruction or software overwriting.
• Maybe your team needs a deep dive into data security. Security awareness training prepares your employees to recognize and neutralize social engineering attacks and human error—helping to end cyber risk at the source.
• Protect your data and reputation. Security Operations monitor and manage your environment 24×7, ensuring proactive and dynamic detection and response to threats, intrusions, and attacks.
• Audit your backup and disaster recovery plan. Ensure your data can be swiftly restored, minimizing downtime, financial losses and the stress of data loss.