PENNSYLVANIA, USA — In a digital-savvy world, the focus on cybersecurity continues to be relevant, especially as the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) along with other digital media agencies recognize "Data Privacy Week."
The weeklong international initiative aims to spread awareness of digital security to both individuals and businesses.
The NCA has provided some tips for people at home to follow when taking care of their digital information:
- Understand the privacy/convenience tradeoff:
The alliance says one should make informed decisions about the information they give to certain businesses. This means deciding whether or not to give the information, depending on what the company is asking for. When confronting apps or services that may ask for more personal details than needed, it's okay to decide not to give said details.
- Manage your privacy:
When you have decided to use an app or service, the NCA says it's helpful to check the privacy and security settings and set them to fit your security needs.
- Protect your data:
The alliance says this is all about keeping your information secure. Create passwords that are unique and not generic or easy to guess. You can also think about adding another layer of security by enabling multi-factor authentications whenever possible.
Data privacy and security are not one-sided as the weeklong effort hopes to help businesses find ways to gain greater trust with their consumers if they haven't done so already. The NCA provides these tips:
- Conduct an assessment:
This is for the business to understand which privacy laws and regulations apply to the respective business. Conducting an assessment can help follow security measures to keep an individual's information safe, and used in a fair manner.
- Adopt a privacy framework:
The NCA says a privacy framework would be a company's personal way to help create a culture of privacy and put it into practice.
- Educate employees:
Once this culture is adopted and established, business leaders can put this forth by engaging with employees and teach them how to practice these measures on a daily basis.
Kyle Cook, senior vice president of digital and emerging media at Universal Media Analytics, says these practices won't bring disadvantages to businesses but actually bring advantages, especially in their personal economic growth.
"Brands and companies that practice those safe data privacy laws and enact those for a better user experience on the back end, actually are seeing better sales," he said.
Cook says multiple states across the country have begun to enact privacy laws catered to their respective populations.
"We've recently seen that come over to the United States with the California Consumer Privacy Act, the CCPA," he said. "We've also seen that now Virginia and Colorado have drafted out privacy laws which essentially allows consumers to understand what their data's being used for."
To learn more about the efforts being done to protect your information, you can head to the Universal Media Analytics website.