Why data privacy compliance is crucial for every business
Data privacy has become a very crucial part of businesses that it’s now being discussed almost everywhere. In fact, it’s very important to the point that it could be the determining factor between a successful and unsuccessful business. Moreover, organizations are now required to comply with regulations on meeting data privacy, which only highlights how vital the issue is.
Therefore, every business needs to invest in cybersecurity and data protection. Moreover, technology has made compliance with data privacy easy to achieve as there are several tools and firms that can help assess your information technology (IT) system for any vulnerability. Even during the development stages of your system, you can still identify any loophole that may jeopardize your efforts of achieving data privacy and correct them early.
Why is data privacy important?
Data privacy is vital on many levels starting from your business, your customers, and the general effort to curb cybercrime. So, if you’re wondering why compliance to data privacy is important, here’s why:
1. Adhere to regulations
Every government will require businesses to adhere to specific regulations. Data privacy and cybersecurity are among the major regulations that businesses need to follow. Different businesses will be required to follow particular compliance or risk fines or their licenses getting revoked. For example, health providers are required to understand HIPAA basics and be compliant to ensure that patient privacy is adhered to.
Therefore, by ensuring that data privacy in your business is followed strictly, you place yourself on the good side of the law. No business will want to be in legal battles with the state or get licenses revoked because they aren’t compliant. Such issues could cause massive financial damages to the business and bring more scrutiny from the government.
2. Win customer trust
Customers will always be comfortable working with a company that promises to protect their data. Therefore, your business needs to be compliant with privacy because customers will trust you with their data, which means they’ll be more willing to engage your business than others that lack proper privacy policies.
It’s common knowledge that customers will determine how successful your business will be; you get customers, your business thrives, you lose customers, your business dies. Therefore, you need to make your customers trust your business by being compliant with data privacy.
3. Prevent data breaches
Data is vital in business as it helps you design business models, lay down strategies, and even run the company’s finances. Therefore, losing your information to hackers could mean that you risk losing your business. Sometimes, hackers can demand huge sums of money during ransomware attacks, which could have a devastating effect on your business.
So, if your business wants to protect its information, it should begin by being compliant with data privacy. The procedure of achieving privacy involves boosting your cybersecurity efforts. By implementing a better security system, all of your IT systems will be safe.
4. It is key in building your brand
Building your brand requires creating a set of values that your customers can relate to. One such value that you can create in your business is data privacy. This will then drive more customers into your business and improve their loyalty. Additionally, these satisfied customers will refer more other customers to your business which helps to increase your customer base.
Implementing data privacy gives you an edge over your competitors as customers consider it a secure place. Once clients associate your business with good values such as data privacy compliance, your brand will grow significantly.
5. Protect your customers
In some cases, your customers will provide their information to you, such as their email addresses, home addresses, or financial information. When they provide you with such information, they trust that it won’t be shared with third parties. However, if your system isn’t secure, third parties can still access this data. They can then spend spammy messages or use the email addresses to launch phishing attacks on your customers.
Therefore, you should ensure that the information provided by your customers is safe with you and not accessible to any person without the client’s permission. By protecting your customers, you save your businesses from legal penalties and the potential loss of customers who value their privacy.
There is potential for breaches at any business. Work on improving your data risk management strategy and ensure that your customer’s data is safe.
Luckily, Google has introduced Chrome Privacy Sandbox. It’s a set of proposals to phase out third-party cookies which are quite vulnerable to breaches. Businesses should check this out to improve their customer data security
Conclusion
Data privacy is crucial to your business and your customers. Therefore, you need to ensure that you’re compliant with data privacy. In the age of technology, data faces more threats from cybercrime as there are more channels that hackers can use to access the information.
So, when you’re building your information system, ensure that you put all the necessary measures to improve data privacy. With benefits such as protecting your business and customers, adhering to regulations, winning customer trust, and building your brand, you can’t afford to miss on data privacy.
