All You Need To Know About Data Protection Laws
Modern customers must be aware of the digital economy trading daily goods and services. And to fulfill this purpose, your private data is shared with several third parties, which increases not only the number of businesses that may make money off of it but also the likelihood that your data gets hacked or leaked in a way that results in actual harm.
It is where data protection laws come into the picture and give people power over their data. However, if executed poorly, they might fail to protect the status quo. So, to ensure your data remains protected online, it is better to consult an attorney who can help you understand all the data protection laws in detail. Consult with an attorney who specializes in data privacy laws.
What are Data Protection Laws?
While the United States does not have a single data protection policy or directive compared to its European counterparts, the data handling across various industries and corporate processes are instead governed by a group of federal and state rules and regulations in the United States. Examples of this include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for healthcare data and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) for financial data. State laws have recently starting adapting their own policies regarding data protection.
Non-profit groups operating in the United States must abide by both federal and state laws to comply with U.S. data protection laws. In addition, federal laws typically govern the collection, storage, and utilization of critical non-public confidential information. For example, if the non-profit involves healthcare, they need to follow HIPAA.
On the other hand, state laws often govern the necessity of disclosures following a security lapse involving non-public personal information. It is crucial for non-profit groups to thoroughly evaluate their activities and identify the states that have jurisdiction over them. In addition, government authorities may also implement federal statutes if they contain a private right of action by affected parties bringing civil lawsuits to enforce them. Besides, private individuals filing civil lawsuits are also responsible for enforcing state laws.
Data protection laws govern the collection, transmission, and use of specific data types. Names, images, email accounts, account numbers, IP addresses of desktop computers, and biometric information are a few examples of the many different types of information that constitute personal data.
Different nations, jurisdictions, and sectors have different data protection and privacy laws. For instance, China's data privacy law became effective on June 1, 2017, while the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU) became effective in 2018. Depending on the transgression and the instructions provided by each legislation and regulatory body, non-compliance may result in reputational harm and financial penalties. The GDPR is a significant data protection regulation that applies to organizations that process personal data of individuals in the EU, regardless of where the organization is located. Different laws may have overlapping or conflicting requirements, and organizations may need to ensure compliance with multiple laws simultaneously.
Data Protection vs. Data Privacy: An Overview
While data protection focuses on enforcing those constraints, data privacy is concerned with determining who has access to information. Basically, data protection refers to the measures and controls in place to protect data from unauthorized access, loss, or theft while data privacy focuses on individuals’ rights and expectations regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of their personal information. The rules that data protection instruments and processes followed by data privacy. Making data privacy policies does not prevent access by unauthorized people. Similarly, you can use data protection laws to limit access while still leaving sensitive data exposed.
Therefore, data protection and privacy are required to guarantee data security. Moreover, who is in charge is another crucial difference between data privacy and protection. Users frequently have discretion over how much of their information is shared and with whom for privacy reasons.
Best Practices for Ensuring Data Protection
Here are some best practices to ensure data protection in your organization.
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Keep an Eye on your Data
Knowing what data you have, how it is used, and where it is maintained is one way to ensure data protection. Your policies should outline how this data is gathered and used. For instance, you must specify how often data is searched for and how it is categorized after being found.
In addition, you must also specify what safeguards are required for the various degrees of data protection in your privacy policy. Moreover, to guarantee that solutions are implemented appropriately, rules should also provide procedures for auditing protections.
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Reduce Data Gathering
Assure that your data protection laws only permit collecting the necessary information. If you gather more data than you need, you put your security teams under unnecessary strain and raise your liability. Keeping your data collecting to a minimum can also enable you to save bandwidth and storage.
In addition, the "verify not collect" framework is one method for accomplishing this. Instead of storing or transferring user information to your systems, these systems leverage third-party data to verify users.
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Maintain Transparency with the Users
Most users are likely to value honesty regarding how you're utilizing and storing data because they are aware of privacy issues. Due to the GDPR, user consent is now a crucial component of data use and acquisition. By incorporating privacy considerations into your websites, you can remain assured that users and their permission are evaluated in your procedures. Have clear user notifications that explain when and why data is gathered, and users should have the choice to change or reject their data acquisition.
Understanding the data protection trends
Organizations must remain aware of some data protection trends to better comply with data protection laws. Some recent data protection trends are as follows:
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Data Independence and Portability
Many modern IT companies need the capacity to move data around. Data portability refers to the capability of transferring data between several software platforms. The ability to transfer data between on-premises data centers, the public cloud, and multiple cloud providers is frequently referred to as data portability. Data portability has legal repercussions because data is governed by various protection laws and rules depending on where it gets accommodated. Furthermore, data portability refers to individuals’ right to obtain and transfer their personal data from one organization to another. When it comes to privacy laws, data portability allows people to have their data transported from one place to another without any harmful effects.
Also, data wasn't portable earlier, and moving datasets to another location required much work and cloud computing, and cloud data migration was exceptionally challenging. New technology approaches are being developed to facilitate the relocation and increase data portability.
The mobility of data within clouds is a similar problem. Most cloud service providers use exclusive data structures, templates, and formats. It leads to vendor lock-in and makes it challenging to migrate data between clouds. Therefore, companies are increasingly searching for standardized methods of managing and storing data to make it transferable between clouds, which requires enhanced data protection.
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Mobile Data Security
Measures created to safeguard private data kept on laptops, cellphones, tablets, wearables, and other handheld devices are called mobile device protection. Preventing unauthorized individuals from accessing your company network is a component of mobile device security. And it is an essential aspect of network security in the modern IT world.
There are numerous tools for protecting mobile data by spotting dangers, backing up data, and preventing threats from endpoints from entering the corporate network. To provide safe mobile access to networks and systems, IT staff- employ mobile data encryption software.
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Conclusion
Due to the increasing use of sensitive and personal information, it is now more important than ever to safeguard it from cybercriminals. So to overcome this problem, data protection laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have been implemented by international agencies.
The GDPR underlines the rights of EU citizens who have personal data, including the ability to update, access, delete, or transfer their private information. However, not many businesses are aware of how to comply with data protection laws. Hence to remain compliant, it is better to hire our attorneys at ContractsCounsel. Our attorneys at ContractsCounsel hold the necessary expertise and can assist you in understanding all the relevant data protection and privacy laws to safeguard your clients' data. We have helped many clients protect their data and comply with privacy laws over the years.
