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Data protection vs. security vs. privacy: Key differences

By Stephen J. Bigelow

Data is the lifeblood of every business. But as companies of all sizes grapple with the challenges of storing and using ever-more data, they also face greater pressures from government regulations as well as user expectations.

Today, even small businesses must address formidable challenges, including classifying, storing and safeguarding a diversified assortment of data types across increasingly granular data lifecycles. The three key aspects of safeguarding data include protection, security and privacy, each of which plays a distinctive role:

Although these three functions are often considered interchangeable, there are important distinctions that business and IT leaders need to understand.

What is data protection?

Data protection embraces the technologies, practices, processes and workflows that impact the availability of data, so the data is there when it's needed. Proper data protection can include various technical assets or considerations:

Data protection must also include careful consideration of policies and procedures to ensure data is retained and handled in a suitable manner:

Data protection can also carry significant regulatory and governance implications for businesses. Accidentally losing data due to disk failure or inadvertent deletion, for example, can impact the organization's ability to function normally, potentially violating compliance requirements or other data protection laws. Many organizations employ a dedicated data protection officer who's specifically responsible for ensuring all data storage meets business requirements.

What is data security?

Data security is all about safeguarding the data against theft, corruption or unauthorized access throughout the entire data lifecycle from creation to destruction. Proper data security can include an array of technologies and processes:

Data security also involves detailed policies and procedures related to the way data is secured and accessed as well as suitable approaches to managing security breach incidents. These documents may include business policies, such as how to determine what data employees can access and use, ongoing employee education sessions, and technical policies such as how encryption is implemented.

As with data protection, data security is a vital element of regulatory compliance and business governance for almost all organizations. Suitable data security policies may be a prerequisite for business partnerships or subcontracting and even business investments like venture capital.

What is data privacy?

Data privacy is primarily a matter of ethical data management and use. Conscientious data privacy can ensure users or other data sources understand a variety of matters related to the collection, use and management of sensitive data, including the following:

Fundamentally, data privacy is a means of bringing a level of transparency to the ways in which a business collects, stores and uses data. In addition, data privacy concepts support some amount of user control over the data that a business possesses. Various data privacy principles can help a user do the following:

Data privacy has become a significant legislative issue for many businesses. Regulatory pressure is applied by different government entities ranging from different states within the U.S. to national-level mandates to entire geopolitical regions. Noteworthy data privacy regulations include the following:

The sheer number of data privacy laws is compounded by the varied terms and obligations presented in each law. Any business that operates in a market governed by data protection regulations is obligated to observe those regulations or face serious fines and other legal penalties for violations. Consequently, a global company might be subject to different regulations, which has complicated business governance and regulatory compliance issues for many large enterprises.

Creating a data management team

Data protection, data security and data privacy are separate but closely aligned practices that every business must address. Meeting the goals of each concept can be overwhelming for a single company or technology leader. Fortunately, this suite of data management objectives can be handled with the collaboration of a carefully selected team including the following roles:

Data protection, security and privacy are still evolving issues that impact everyone -- individuals, businesses and state and national governments. It's vital for every company to treat data management as a dynamic and ever-changing challenge that must be reviewed, reevaluated and updated frequently to ensure the business remains in compliance with legislation and best practices.

Stephen J. Bigelow, senior technology editor at TechTarget, has more than 20 years of technical writing experience in the PC and technology industry.

15 Apr 2024

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