What is data protection, and why is it important?

If important data is corrupted, it can cause irreparable damage to individuals as well as institutions, so it is necessary to protect them from being damaged, in the field of data protection , in fact, there is a need to ensure that if data is lost, you can recover the data again. It is also necessary to provide security and privacy for all your data , in general, data protection is an essential issue, which is why we are going to discuss it in more detail and mention the important points.

What is data protection?

Data protection is the protection of privacy by regulating the processing of personal information, as well as identifying individuals to protect data by defining their duties and having control over their work.

As we mentioned earlier, data availability in case of a data breach is one of the principles of data protection and another important issue in this field is data management.

Data management itself has two fields including data lifecycle management and information lifecycle management, which we are going to discuss in more detail below.

- Data lifecycle management:

In this field of data management, all important data in a system is in the way of storing it online as well as offline.

- Information lifecycle management:

In this cycle, the information is protected against errors that may occur in the program, such as virus attacks, technical problems in the device, malware , etc., in order not to damage them, new tasks may be added to the management every day, and the ultimate goal is to protect the data in the best possible way.

Which methods were used to protect data in the past?

As you know, when the data is stored, some steps needs to be taken in order to protect it, the best ways for data storage are offline methods, in the past, many organizations, tried offline method in order to store their data through which they copied data to the tape cartridge machine, and they would eventually protect that tape.

Storing data on another computer system is something that you have to be more worried about because your data is more endangered, due to the fact that protecting your data from hacking attack would be much harder, even though having access to the tapes may be a slow process, it is the best method and there won’t be any risk of attacking the network and losing data backup.

As a result, it is generally necessary to back up all data, because as we have mentioned, this is one of the principles of data protection , different properties of data caused the need for more protection, one of them is the ability to being transferred, which we will mention more in the following.

The ability to transfer data:

This feature allows data to be transferred between clients or servers, which ultimately raises concerns about data duplication among data owners.

In the meantime, it is necessary to point out that another method that can be used to back up data is cloud backup, which has become more common these days, and most organizations often transfer their backed up data to public clouds or clouds maintained by backup vendors.

This method is better and simpler than the method which people used for data storage in the past and the ability to access data is also faster.

So far we have made some remarks about data protection , but you need to know which data needs to be protected?

Which data should be protected?

Normally, information such as documents of, transactions which have been made, employee work history, customer information, etc., should be protected, so that hackers and profiteers cannot use this important information in different ways.

As we mentioned above, a step that was taken in order to protect the data, was storing it, which is still one of the methods of data protection, essential data such as important emails, phone numbers, credit card details, documents, etc., are also important documents that need to be stored.

Data storage has rules that must be followed properly during the process, so that you can keep all the necessary data accurate, secure and legal.

Rules to follow while storing backup data:

- Information storage should be done through pre-determined methods.

- All stored data should be stored in a secure environment.

- Data storage time is limited.

- Only limited and specific people have access to data, and it is not possible for everyone in an organization.

- There shouldn’t be the permission of copying the stored data.

- While saving, enable the feature which gives you the opportunity of saving your data automatically, so in case of a hacking attack, it won’t be possible to access the backed up data for profiteers.

- Provide strong passwords for backed up data to protect them properly.

Why is data protection important?

Data protection is important due to various factors, which can be summarized as follows.

- Provide security:

Security is very important and one of the factors that can help you provide security is data protection, in fact, data protection laws ensure that important data, such as the private information of employees, customers, and other data associated with the organization, are properly protected and not made available to profiteers.

Of course, the important point that should be mentioned here is that it is necessary to check all the information you receive from each person to make sure that this information is correct, and then put your time and energy into storing it.

These actions can greatly prevent cybercrime, and ultimately your employees and customers can trust you, in addition, by checking the information of customers, you can also trust your employees and customers, as a result, you can safely provide them with important information.

- Not following data protection tips will cost a fortune:

Imagine that you are the owner of a site which different users give their personal information such as bank card information, username, address, etc., to your website, but you do not care about data protection, in this case, profiteers can have access to all users’ information easily, therefore users have the right to sue you in such circumstances, and the law may impose heavy fines on you, as a result, you should take care of users’ information as good as possible in order to prevent the possible threats from happening.

In addition to the two factors which we have mentioned above, there are other things that can be mentioned in order to emphasize the importance of data protection , but these two were the ones that should be taken into consideration more than the others.

Differences between data protection, security and privacy:

Each of these three has a huge world, but some individuals and institutions equate the terms data protection, data security, and data privacy and use them interchangeably, so it is necessary to give a brief explanation of their differences, simply put, data protection can be expressed as backing up and recovering information in order to prevent data loss. Data security is also a set of measures that should be taken in order to protect information and systems in the best possible way against various manipulations as well as the entry of malware.

Privacy is also the right of each user, institution, etc., to determine a limitation for other people in having access to their information and the time when they prefer to share this information with them, it is easy to conclude that if hackers invade the privacy of institutions and individuals, the law will severely punish them.

Last word:

In general, data protection is an important issue and its importance is increasing day by day, in this article we have explained one of the reasons for this to you, so that if you have not thought about the ways to protect your data to date, now you know the necessary steps that should be taken in order to protect them, as a result you should take action immediately because if you don’t, your information would be stolen and abused.