Personal devices have made it easier than ever to connect with each other, search the Internet, and even pay for items in stores. However, now that we are living with all this togetherness, what impact has it had on our lives? On the one hand, it has changed the way we think about our personal data. We pay top dollar for regulation-free usability. Have you been involved in a breach or has personal information been sold to unwanted callers?
In the United States, there are currently no federal privacy laws in place to monitor and manage data. Therefore, companies have not been required to manage or understand the data they host. Because of this, the general population is misguided regarding their data rights, and businesses struggle to comply due to the lack of data management and governance practices.
The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was the first mass data privacy law governing personal information, which seems to be a quasi-model for laws appearing in the United States.
Breaking down the GDPR
Four years ago, the European Union (EU) implemented GDPR, to unify previously fragmented data protection laws in its member countries, and help end the widespread sharing of personal data without consent and knowledge of the owner.
So where are we now? During its short tenure, GDPR has brought lasting benefits to ensuring customer privacy. This allows people to understand their rights, what personal data is held in organizations and has helped build trust within the customer community. Regulation has also benefited businesses, by providing a basis for setting up compliance structures within organizations.
Privacy is essential for businesses
For organizations to comply with these laws and maintain corporate governance, they must create a data management and governance strategy. A good data governance strategy should identify the types of data, where that data resides, and create a retention policy for that data, allowing companies to better analyze data created by employees, or unstructured data, that are found in the information shared daily by humans. . Unstructured data represents approximately 80% of all enterprise data, yet it is often overlooked.
However, processing this unstructured data carries an inherent risk under privacy laws. With privacy data governance, which ensures the organization’s compliance with the law, risk can be mitigated while ensuring that governance objectives and privacy efforts are met simultaneously. To truly manage/govern risk, organizations must merge governance with analytical processes for privacy. This unified approach to data management and governance will ensure that organizations are compliant with laws and internal strategic objectives.
Four ways to be GDPR compliant
As businesses strive to comply with privacy laws and governance requirements, there are four ways organizations can follow in the footsteps of GDPR:
- Ensure that all sensitive user-generated content is legitimately collected
- Identifying unstructured content early in the governance process is key to gaining a better understanding of the data stored within an organization.
- Make sure identified data is secure
- Companies must protect the data stored in their systems. This includes ensuring that all third party service providers are also GDPR compliant.
- Allow data owners to request and delete stored data
- If a user requests that data be deleted from the system, the company has an obligation to delete this information.
- Create a governance model for use in self-audits and risk analysis to ensure compliance
- Regular and thorough audits of data held by companies can avoid potential risks.
In conclusion
Organizations must elevate their data management and privacy regulations to comply with governance policies, which will align with privacy laws. This will allow for the proper management and storage of personal data and avoid some of the privacy issues we face today.
The US business environment has ignored these issues for quite a long time and needs to implement a strong data management and governance strategy, as well as a system to manage that strategy. It’s time for the United States to weigh the pros and cons of broader privacy regulations to provide enhanced data protections, like GDPR, that will ensure that as a nation there is legal requirements to manage and govern the data. Raising privacy nationally will help us all understand our rights and what personal data is being used.
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