It’s crucial to understand the difference between security, data protection and privacy when it comes to safeguarding sensitive information. While they may sound like they are similar, each serves a distinct purpose in your overall data protection strategy. Data protection best practices safeguard your company’s information against loss, compromise, and corruption through the use of protocols and controls that restrict access to activity, monitor it, and identify and respond threats. Data security concerns safeguarding the integrity of your data as well as safeguarding critical information against illegitimate changes, while data privacy dictates who can access your data and what information may be shared with third parties.

To properly manage your data protection, start by performing a complete audit of your business infrastructure to determine the type and source of the data you gather. This will enable you to map your system and determine the policies you’ll need to implement.

Once you have mapped your data it’s time to build a classification system. This system is used to define access controls for use and modification and assists you in meeting compliance. It is crucial to have a consistent and easy classification scheme, no matter the type of role or access-oriented schema. This will reduce the risk of human error that could lead to data not being secured.

Then, you’ll have to create a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery plan that safeguards your data in the event of a cyber-attack. Encrypting your data when it is in the point of transit and at rest is one way to ensure that malicious actors can’t read your data. It is also crucial to update your backup and disaster recovery plan in order to ensure that you navigate to these guys are able to continue operating your business if there is a cyberattack.