Why Data Security And Privacy is Important For Businesses

It’s no secret that in the past two decades and especially in recent years, people are increasingly getting more reliant on the internet, and every single day a massive amount of sensitive data is being circulated on social media networks, emails, websites, and other online platforms.

In the earliest days of the internet, there weren’t too many ways cybercriminals could use sensitive and personal data to gain profit for themselves, but that is no longer the case nowadays. A lot of businesses want a piece of your personal data for their marketing purpose and other means, and there are various other ways to gain profit from your sensitive information.

This is why data privacy and data security are now very important for any business, and in this guide, we will discuss all the ins and outs of this subject.

Why Data Security Matters for Businesses To Ensure Data Privacy

Data is now the most valuable asset for businesses, and this is why collecting and sharing data is now a lucrative industry on its own.

However, if a business can’t protect its data, especially its customers’ data, not only this business won’t be able to leverage this data, but it can potentially face various repercussions, from loss of revenue to long-term damages to your reputations.

This is where data security comes in.

As the name suggests, data security is the efforts of protecting digital information. Obviously, the main concern of data security is to protect our data from external malicious efforts (i.e., hacking), but data integrity can also be compromised from internal causes (both unintentional and malicious) for example when an employee accidentally forwarded an email containing sensitive information to unauthorized people. These types of activities are also the concern of data security.

When businesses collect and store personal data (i.e. user’s credit card information), the business is immediately exposed to various data privacy risks.

With that being said, here are some of the most important reasons why data privacy protection and data security are important for your business:

1.   Protecting your customers’ privacy

Customers today are growing more concerned about their data privacy, and according to a recent survey, 90% of surveyed Americans believed that their data should be properly secured, and they won’t do business with companies that misuse the gathered data, especially when a company has a previous history of data breaches.

There are many ways potential customers can research your track record online before they do any business with you, and in this age of social media, people will share their bad experiences.

So, if you don’t prioritize data security as an important strategy in your business, you risk losing your customers’ trust, which can result in losing potential revenue and long-term damages to your reputation.

2.   Meeting regulations and compliance requirements

Various regulations have been placed by governments all around the world, making data security practices mandatory as legal requirements. GDPR, for example, has been around since 2018 and has been a huge influence on this trend.

Businesses that fail to implement data security may face huge fines and up to 20-year penalties. So, protecting your customer’s data privacy should be your top priority to meet your local compliance requirements.

3.   Boosting your brand value

Effective implementation of data security can improve your brand’s perceived worth as more prospects and customers see your brand as a trustworthy and credible business.

On the other hand, businesses attacked by cybercriminals would experience direct impacts on their brand perception: customers will see these brands as far less secure and may instantly turn to their competitors.

Implementing data security and communicating how your business truly cares about your customers’ data privacy can be a great way to build your reputation and boost your brand value.

To do this, businesses must update their data security infrastructure and best practices constantly to keep themselves always ahead of the cybercriminals, who are also constantly evolving.

4.   Protecting your employees and attract more talents

Data security isn’t solely about attracting your customers, but can also be a great way to improve your company’s internal environment.

Cybercriminals are now increasingly targeting individual data accounts in businesses, especially smaller businesses. This is because, in smaller businesses, it’s quite common to have individual devices connected in a single network, and a security breach to one of these devices can easily cause a chain reaction and the hacker can instantly gain access to the whole network.

By implementing proper data security best practices and investing in botnet protection solutions like DataDome, you can effectively stop these potential data breaches on every individual device, protecting your employees’ sensitive information in the process.

This can, in turn, help build your reputation as a secure workplace and business, and can help you attract more talent in the future.

5.   Boosting your business growth

It’s easy to assure that data security is just a protective measure, but it can actually be an effective growth strategy: you grow your brand’s reputation by protecting your customer data. If, for example, your prospects perceive your brand as more secure than your competitors, then you can easily win your competitors’ customers.

So, use data security and protection of data privacy as significant aspects of your business’s overall strategy.

Conclusion

Data privacy concerns have become a major issue for so many businesses because customers are now connecting everything with the internet, including various IoT devices. So, the risks associated with privacy breaches have also increased.

Above, we have discussed how implementing data security best practices is very important for any business to protect their customer’s data, but also to build a healthy brand reputation and grow the business.