Data Protection and Cybersecurity – Together or Separately?

Whitecase affirms that the possibility of misusing delicate personal information has birthed legislative and regulatory laws globally due to its high risk. Privacy laws are incessantly metamorphosing based on their jurisdiction and unpredictable interpretations, which puts them in a constant state of variability. This implies that even the most strategic and industrious organisations can make certain mistakes as they collect, utilise, transfer and reveal personal information. A similar concept applies to cybersecurity, a term that has become exceedingly complex. The repercussions can be serious in the form of government audits, heavy fines, criminal liability, etc.

Moreover, organisations that operate counter to privacy and cybersecurity strategies end up being open to infamous media attention and suffer a long-lasting negative reputation from customers. These risks have caused an increasing number of international companies to seek the assistance of several data privacy and cybersecurity groups to ensure effective privacy and security strategies that comply with the existing regulations and legal procedures while maintaining their competitive advantage.

Apexprivacy defines data protection as a set of instructions whose aim is to secure personal and organisational data. In plain terms, data protection is the process of protecting vital information from compromise, corruption, or loss. Basically, differentiating between data protection and cybersecurity isn’t something everyone can do. When there’s a leak, we can attribute that to cybersecurity because there was a hack. However, the mishandling of data has to do with data protection because there was uncertified access to data. A recent example is the recent Facebook mishandling of the data saga.

Nevertheless, in most cases, many organisations often find it hard to decide whether to adopt data protection and cybersecurity simultaneously or separately. The combination of data protection and cybersecurity results in a more comprehensive and productive security approach that will help secure personal and organisational data safely from the dangers of cyber attacks. In addition to protecting your data, the union of these two concepts also ensures that you abide by the laid down protection regulations.

What is Data Protection?

According to TechTarget, data protection is the process of shielding vital data from corruption, alteration, or loss and putting in place measures to restore data to a usable state whenever the functionality or accessibility of data is tampered with. Data protection ensures that data integrity is maintained to ensure that there’s no unauthorised access by unauthorised persons and to ensure compliance with the laid down regulatory data protection rules.

Protected data should be available and accessible when needed and should be able to meet the intended purpose of its use. Data protection as a concept extends beyond the subject of data availability and usability. It also entails areas such as data immutability, preservation, and deletion. Categorically speaking, data protection covers three broad aspects. These are:

• Customary data protection, such as backup and restore functions.
• Data security
• Data privacy

The methods and technologies involved in securing these data can be referred to as data protection mechanisms. Aside from protecting data, data protection also oversees the relationship between the collection and circulation of data and technology, public opinion, and the expectations and legal circumstances associated with that data. Data protection also aims to make positive adjustments to individual privacy rights while upholding the usability of data for business purposes.

Private or corporate data forms should always entail data protection as it secures the authenticity of the data, shields the data from corruption and manipulations, and ascertains the privacy of the data while ensuring that only authorised individuals can access the data. Usually, the context of data protection is dynamic, and the mechanisms of each context also vary. Data protection could be done at the personal level, there’s one for businesses and public organisations, and there’s data protection for top-priority and highly classified data that wrong people or unauthorised persons should never access.

What is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity, as a concept, mostly has to do with internet-related subjects. Cybersecurity is the safeguarding of internet-related systems ( hardware, software, and data) from cyber attacks. Individuals and corporate organisations employ this strategy to shield against unauthorised access to data storage centres and other computerised systems. An effective cybersecurity strategy can establish a good security stance against malicious attacks programmed to access, manipulate, damage, or extort sensitive data from an organisation’s or user’s system.

Cybersecurity is vital for shielding against attacks that can render a system or device ineffective. With the proliferating amount of users, programs, and devices in modern organisations, coupled with the increasing avalanche of sensitive and top-secret data, the importance of cybersecurity can not be overemphasised. However, the increasing volume and complexity of cyber attacks and various attack methods aggravated the problem.

Regardless of the severity and form of cyberattacks, cybersecurity aims to defend computers, mobile devices, electronic systems, servers, networks, data, etc., from destructive online attacks. For this reason, cybersecurity is also regarded as electronic information security or information technology security. The term comes in handy in various contexts, ranging from business to mobile systems, and entails several categories.

Application Security – This is concerned with protecting software and devices from attacks. If an application is compromised, unauthorised persons could access the data that the application is meant to protect. An excellent security strategy begins at the blueprint level before the deployment of the program.

Network Security – Network security centres on securing a computer network from intruders. Network intruders can be in the form of targeted attackers or unscrupulous malware.

Information Security – Information Security deals with protecting the integrity and privacy of data at all times.

Operational Security – This category of cyber security entails the processes and decisions that are required to handle and protect data assets. Operational security covers some important aspects of cybersecurity, such as the authorisation users have when accessing a network and the instructions that determine the mode and location of data storage and distribution.

An organisation’s response to any incident that results in the interruption of operations is determined by its duration of disaster recovery and business continuity. Several disaster recovery strategies determine how an organisation recovers data and restores operations to the same functional capacity before the interruption. Business continuity is an organisation’s fallback strategy when trying to operate during downtimes. The methods of cyber attacks are evolving at a rapid pace as there’s an increasing number of data breaches annually.

Why should Data Protection and Cybersecurity Be Used Together?

Customarily, data protection and cybersecurity have been considered separate entities. Users generally perceive security as a technical issue, while data protection has to do with the accessibility of data and its protection from unauthorised access. In plain words, cybersecurity is a technical tool for implementing privacy measures. Nevertheless, challenges exist when users think these entities only protect the interest of data owners and are impeccable.

A data breach can have deleterious effects on several aspects of an organisation. Cybersecurity and data protection can be a comprehensive strategy for protecting an organisation’s data from these breaches. The effectiveness of cybersecurity can be reinforced by data protection. Usually, major data breaches begin with access to personal and organisational data. This is a significant threat that cuts across all types of breaches. Coupling data protection and cybersecurity strategies give companies absolute control over the stages of their data lifecycle. This also makes it easier to adhere to existing regulations.

Additionally, simultaneously adopting data protection and cybersecurity is a productive way of enhancing client satisfaction and trust. This is because the clients feel that your organisation is devoted to the security of their data, especially if they are top-secret and sensitive.

Forbes affirms that the recent U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs exposed the personal information of approximately 46,000 veterans, putting them at risk. Cybercriminals attempted to divert payments from the department through some social engineering strategies and exploiting authentication protocols. Sadly, recent news reported that several personal data might have been compromised. This informs us that personal data and system protocols can be affected by similar events. In instances like this, the situation has to be analysed from an integrated perspective that entails data protection and cybersecurity, not from two separate views.

An organisation’s approach to handling data breaches should be multilateral since data breaches affect several aspects of an organisation’s workflow. This implies that both cybersecurity and data protection professionals should combine their skills and expertise to prevent data breaches.

An organisation that adopts separate strategies and methods for every type of risk may not have detailed visibility of its data security. This bolsters the need to adopt end-to-end solutions that oversee all forms of business, security, and compliance challenges.

Storware pays special attention to introducing mechanisms to its data protection solution that meet the requirements of cybersecurity and modern methods of data protection. Learn MORE.