In today’s modern and digital age of data-driven movements, data plays a crucial role in our personal and professional lives. Everything we do generates data in this digital world, both public and private. Data are generated from our devices connected through networks, smart cars, payment systems, smart homes, shopping habits, and transportation systems. These data are used to gather intelligence by finding patterns in them and then making decisions directly impacting the individual day-to-day lives.

Many of the software companies and organizations collection these data spend the predominant amount of time and effort to protect these private data, ensuring that sensitive information remains confidential and secure. While they act as a guardian of the privacy of the data, they also need to make sure that the data stored in the computer is secure and does not fall into the wrong hands.

In this blog post, we will learn about the role of computer security in safeguarding data privacy.

Why is Data Privacy important?

Data privacy is a process in which the personal or sensitive information of an individual is protected and controlled from unauthorized access, use, or being disclosed publicly. It encompasses the idea of an individual having a fundamental right that dictates how their data is collected, stored, and shared with individuals. In this interconnected world, data is considered as the new currency. With the exponential data growth in this digital era, the need for robust data privacy measures has become imperative to protect personal data or Personally identifiable information (PII) data.

What is Personal Data or Personally identifiable information (PII) data?

Personal data or Personally identifiable information (PII) is any kind of information connected to an individual that can identify that individual identity.

Some examples are below.

• Unique Identification Numbers such as driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, and other government issue ID numbers
• Biometric Data such as fingerprints and retinal scans
• Financial Information such as Bank account number and credit card numbers
• Date of Birth

What is Computer Security?

Computer security is the first line of defense when it comes to protecting data. It includes various technologies, protocols, and practices that are used to protect computer systems, networks, and data from unauthorized access, manipulation, or theft. Safeguarding the data allows citizens and consumers to trust in the administration, business, and private entities.

Role of Computer Security in Preserving Data Privacy

There are many technologies available that can be used as data security measures to protect data in an organization. Some of the crucial ones are listed below.

Encryption

Encryption is an important computer security measure that conceals data by transforming it into an unreadable form. These random data or unreadable data are ciphertexts that are generated by using cryptographic algorithms. Both the data at rest and data in transit can be encrypted, making it unintelligible to unintended individuals if they intercept the data. Only those individuals with the encryption key and access can unscramble the information, making sure the confidentiality and integrity of the data are maintained.

Access Control

Access control makes sure that only authorized individuals of the application system have access to data. Computer security systems enforce authentication and authorization to grant access only to authorized individuals or systems. This system includes multifactor authentication, strong password policies, roles roles-based policies and also can be combined with a Data Loss Prevention(DLP) strategy to stop the transfer of sensitive data out of the network.

Firewall and Intrusion Detection System

Firewall and Intrusion Detection Systems monitor and filter traffic and act as a barrier against unauthorized access, malicious attacks, or any kind of intrusion attempts. It also analyzes the network traffic patterns and blocks suspicious activity to block sensitive data from going out, thus protecting data privacy.

Vulnerability Management

In this technique, organizations regularly assess and address vulnerabilities within their organization on a timely basis. Organizations must maintain robust vulnerability management practices, update their software, patch any security issues, and scan their software for vulnerability issues so that it can be addressed promptly.

Data Masking

In this technique, sensitive data is masked by encryption, hashing generalizations, or perturbation, making it harder for bad actors to interpret its values if compromised. It also involves uses process of Pseudonymization in which sensitive data is replaced with realistic fictional or synthetic data, thus maintaining operational and statistical accuracy.

Archival of Secure Audit Trail

In this security proactive, organizations maintain the audit trail for tampering, modification, or deletion of data, thus providing forensic visibility of the data to the auditors through the use of logs and change management process. This practice is required as part of compliance regulations and contractual agreements when storing sensitive data. Organizations should trigger an alarm for any kind of unauthorized access or changes in the data.

Some examples of compliance or regulations are given below.

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR — European Union)
• Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA — Canada)
• Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH)
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

Incident Response and Data Breach Management Process

There are many cases of data breach happenings despite robust data security measures. Organizations must have well-defined procedures in place to detect, respond, and recover from security incidents promptly. This can include incident reporting, forensic analysis, and effective communication to mitigate the consequences of data breaches and protect individual or customer data privacy.

Organizations should spend their time and resources to train their employees on handling sensitive data. Annual or periodic training needs to be provided to the employees on various levels depending upon what data they handle.

Conclusion

In an interconnected world, protecting data privacy is of utmost importance for any organization. Computer security along with its various techniques plays a critical role in safeguarding the sensitive data of the customer or individual in an organization. Thus, we learned about Personally identifiable information (PII), Computer security, and its vital role in protecting the individual’s data privacy.