Data Privacy Day

And finally, Jan. 28 is Data Privacy Day, an international effort to create awareness about the importance of respecting privacy, safeguarding data and enabling trust.

Don Boxley is CEO and co-founder of DH2i. He said the perpetual concern around data privacy and protection has led to an abundance of new and increasingly stringent regulations around the world.

“According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 71% of countries now have data protection and privacy legislation, with another 9% having draft legislation,” he said. “This increased scrutiny makes perfect sense. Data is being created and flowing not just from our business endeavors, but countless personal interactions we make every day, whether we are hosting an online conference, making an online purchase, or using a third party for ride-hailing, food delivery or package transport.”

Nathan Howe is vice president of emerging tech and 5G at Zscaler. He said those responsible for protecting organizations’ information, such as IT security and HR departments, must do so with great care. That’s because each piece of information has a completely different value today than it would have had a few years ago and so must be protected differently.

“The first step is to decide which data is and is not private so it can be categorized,” he said. “With data flagged as private or public, for example, an appropriately trained chatbot can filter it before processing.”

The fear of mishandling information is justified in light of technological progress, Howe said.

“Organizations have the power to protect their data, however, and they need to take countermeasures so that sensitive and private data is not made public,” he said. “As a first step, they must get complete visibility of all the data stored in their IT ecosystem in order to take measures to classify it. A cloud-based internet security platform provides the power to scan for sensitive data about to be exposed on the internet, and moreover, it can secure cloud environments with a zero trust approach to effectively categorize each piece of data.”