Data Privacy & Data Security: What’s the Difference?

Information has always been a form of currency in society—from buying favors to building connections and generating financial gain.

Businesses rely on information; now more than ever. The more data you have from your consumers, the more you can offer, customize, and sell. In short, data helps your bottom line.

But, with consumer data comes data responsibility. This responsibility requires you to manage consumer data in line with data privacy and security regulations. These laws and regulations require you to collect, store, manage, and use personal data responsibly and securely.

Yes, that means you must both protect it from threats and store and process it according to the data subject’s wishes, adhering to the principles of the general data protection regulation.

If you fail to comply with consumers’ data rights or are found to not have taken appropriate security measures, you can face legal repercussions. Plus, it’s not just a data privacy compliance issue; your reputation determines whether consumers trust you with their information or not.

So, what exactly are data privacy and security? How are they different, and what makes them similar?

Let’s find out.

We’ve discussed how data security and privacy differ in this older post, but let’s quickly recap.

Similarities Between Data Security and Privacy

Both data privacy and data security fall under the data management umbrella. Even though they are two separate processes, there are some overlaps in their roles.

Both Keep Sensitive Information Safe

Privacy and security are both geared toward keeping your organization’s sensitive information safe from misuse and unauthorized access. The former does it by forcing you to evaluate what information you can and should store, while the latter does so with technical and legislative safeguards.

Both Mitigate Risk

What risks? Data breaches, identity theft, and unauthorized data exposure. All of these can lead to penalties, especially if it’s personal information of consumers at stake.

Data security for reducing risks sounds logical, but how does data privacy help? One of the core principles underpinning data privacy guidelines is data minimization.

According to this principle, you must only collect information that you need and nothing more, which means you’ll have less to store and protect. Thus, even if there is a data breach, you’ve limited the amount of consumer information that threat actors can steal from you.

Both Help You Comply with Regulations

You must have heard of the GDPR. It—along with other regulations issued by various states, such as California’s CCPA—outlines how you should collect and protect personal data. Drafting a strong privacy and security framework for your business helps you stay compliant with these laws.

Both Are Essential for Building Trust

Any relationship—even a business relationship—is built on trust. Would you trust a friend after they brought random strangers into your house and one of them stole your wallet?

Probably not, right? So why expect customers to trust you if you can’t keep their sensitive data safe?

On the other hand, if you can keep their data from prying eyes and keep it safe in accordance with their consent, they will be more likely to do business with you.

Best Practices for Ensuring Data Privacy

While data privacy laws do provide guidance, you may want to consider building an internal privacy policy for your business data.

There are several elements that make a good data privacy program. Here are some best practices to help you create one:

Inventory Your Data

To protect something, you first need to know of its existence and location. That’s why you need to know what data you have, how and where it’s stored, and how you handle it. Once you’ve discovered your data, it should be classified as well.

Data classification is when you rate it in order of sensitivity and importance. Sensitive personal data needs more protection than other types.

Finally, you need to decide how often you carry out the inventorying process. This is something you must do periodically because you’re continuously collecting data and adding it to your systems.

Minimize Data Collection

We know data is power, and with great power comes great responsibility. The more you collect, the more you need to manage and protect. That’s why data privacy best practices recommend minimizing your data collection.

Only collect what you absolutely need. This isn’t just great for privacy, but it also reduces your risk. You can’t accidentally expose data in a breach if you aren’t processing that data in the first place.

Be Transparent with Your Customers

Consent is a major part of data privacy. For valid consent, the consumer must know what you’re collecting and how it’ll be used, among other information. Clear privacy notices inform them of your intent and the purpose of collection.

This notice should ideally offer the customer the option to opt out of data collection altogether and also allow them to decide what they’re comfortable sharing. The more power you give your customers over their data, the more they will trust you.

Invest in Privacy Management Software

When you invest in data privacy—true and comprehensive data privacy—you’ll find compliance can involve tedious and time-consuming work.

Platforms like Osano make managing data and your customers’ privacy so much easier. You can automate data mapping, consent management, data subject access request (DSAR) processes, privacy impact assessments (PIA), and so much more.

They also manage compliance for you. If your business is spread across multiple states or countries, you must comply with each jurisdiction's regulations by protecting data. An automated platform will be able to do that for you.

Intrigued? Find out more about what our data privacy management platform can do for you.