A Step-by-Step Guide to Resolve Your Biggest Data Privacy Challenges

Data is one of the biggest driving forces behind the successful day-to-day functioning of organisations. It is an invaluable asset that enables you to understand your customers better, optimise your operations, make informed business decisions, and accelerate long-term growth.

May. 14, 2024

However, with the proliferation of data, ever-changing regulatory landscape, and threats of cyberattacks and data breaches looming large, data privacy has emerged as burning topic. In 2023, the average cost incurred by organisations for a data breach was US$ 4.45 million – nearly a 15% increase from three years ago, indicating the severe ramifications of not strengthening your cybersecurity and data privacy capabilities.

Over 51% of organisations today recognise the importance of having robust data privacy programme in place and intend to increase their security investment to effectively detect threats of varying degrees and minimise data breaches. However, designing and implementing actionable measures that can effectively resolve data privacy challenges remains easier said than done.

Organisations need to ensure they adopt a risk-based approach to data privacy management because it is a non-zero-sum game.

The Most Common Data Privacy Challenges in 2024

Almost every function within your organisation is involved in collecting, storing, and accessing a wide range of personal data from your customers, partners, or internal employees. This poses potential information security and data privacy concerns. If they are not assessed and dealt with properly, it could leave you susceptible to unauthorised access, theft, and the sale of sensitive data by malicious third parties.

Listed below are some of the most common data privacy challenges that organisations face today:

• Lack of proper safeguards and clear policies against data breaches and cyberattacks: Be it data hoarding, identity theft, confidential information leakage, or data trading, there are multiple ways and channels through which adversaries can breach your safeguards and impact your business operations. With disruptive technologies on the rise, the very nature of data breaches and cyberattacks are changing, which makes it challenging for organisations to adequately equip themselves to tackle these issues and be future-ready. Once a data breach occurs and becomes public, it is likely to severely impact customer trust towards your brand. In fact, a whopping 94% of organisations acknowledge their customers won’t buy from them if their data is not properly protected. The message is loud and clear.
• Proliferation of data and devices within the organisation: Over two megabytes of new data enter into the digital sphere per second. As businesses access and collect significant volumes of consumer data from different channels, it can be challenging to control and streamline the policies of safely collecting, storing, and using them. Different teams end up having different policies and approaches towards handling personal data, leading to a lack of clarity and uniformity. This in turn creates a host of data visibility and compliance issues. The lack of clear data mapping often ends up putting businesses in precarious situations where they are unable to fulfil customer requests to protect their personal data and accurately locate where their information is stored.
• Lack of internal governance and cultural buy-in: Data privacy professionals are often isolated within an organisation, as there is a lack of collaboration and alignment between them and business owners. This is tied into the wider problem of insufficient budget allocated to strengthening investment into data protection. If the top and middle management do not share a commitment towards implementing strong data privacy protocols across the entire business ecosystem, it is hard to influence employees at lower levels of the organisation and drive cultural buy-in. There is never a one-size-fits-all solution, so it is essential to have shared ownership and collective effort to build and execute a strong data privacy and governance roadmap.
• Ever-changing regulatory landscape and global legislations: Data privacy laws and regulations continue to change and evolve across the globe, making it difficult for organisations to keep pace with the latest developments. Sometimes, data privacy laws could impact an aspect of your business, even if you do not have a geographical presence in the country or region that passed the legislation. This makes it critical to constantly monitor the material and territorial scope of the data protection laws, and to seek external legal advice if necessary.

Tips to Avoid and Address Data Privacy Issues

Here are some proven strategies and useful tips that can help you get started in your journey to bolster data privacy and tackle the aforementioned challenges:

• Strengthen your cybersecurity measures by protecting your digital assets thoroughly, plugging gaps in your current coverage, and consistently advancing your safety protocols as your business scales.
• Minimise the likelihood of third-party data access as much as possible to tackle the problems of data trading – potential solutions could involve building more internal tools and software-based solutions.
• Disable location tracking to prevent unwarranted data leaks and limit internal employees from accessing sensitive company assets from personal devices.
• Instil a mindset of only collecting personal data when absolutely necessary to prevent hoarding large volumes of data that put you at significant risk of cyberattacks.
• Allocate sufficient budget to invest in strengthening your data protection capabilities – this investment will go a long way in saving millions of dollars of regulatory fines incurred from data breaches.
• Create easy-to-understand Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) around personal data collection, storage, and usage, and conduct rigorous trainings to ensure that all employees have at least a basic understanding of the same – having shared ownership is critical to ensuring data privacy and information security protocols are strictly followed at all times.

Although your organisation is likely to have in-house cybersecurity and data privacy SMEs, it requires a collective effort from all employees across the board to ensure the proper protection of personal data, regular assessment of potential risks and vulnerabilities, and to safeguard all facets of your day-to-day operations from external and internal threats. Ultimately, having robust data privacy and protection in place is integral to preserving your brand reputation and consumer trust, gatekeeping compliance to avoid unnecessary penalties, and boosting your long-term business sustainability.