Data privacy has been a growing requirement ever since the internet age began. So much personal information is flying around through computer networks. As a result, protecting it has become a mandate.
Most companies must follow HIPAA, GDPR, or another industry or locality-based privacy rule. By the end of 2024, 75% of the world’s population will have their data protected. It will fall under one or more privacy regulations. You don’t need to be a large enterprise organization to have data privacy compliance at the top of your mind. It goes hand in hand with cybersecurity. Additionally, privacy requirements hit all sized companies.
Between July 2020 and July 2021, GDPR violations rose by 113.5%. The number of associated fines also jumped by 124.92%. Regarding HIPAA violations, each incident can carry a penalty between $100 to $25,000. Therefore, it’s essential to prioritize data privacy and factor it into all your data collection processes. When companies collect, send, or store personally identifiable information (PII), it needs protection. To protect PII, companies must have adequate safeguards in place. To stay on top of your privacy compliance obligations, you should keep up with trends in this area. Next, you should know the most significant data privacy trends in 2023.
What’s Happening in Data Privacy Compliance?
- AI Governance
Approximately 40% of privacy compliance technology requires artificial intelligence (AI). As a result, AI has undoubtedly made its way into many of our daily applications. For example, when typing in MS Word and text springs up as a suggestion, AI is predicting what you’ll type next. Likewise, when working on a photograph in Photoshop, you can now click a button to change an image’s frowning face to a smile. That feature is also the work of AI. So, it’s unsurprising that AI runs many algorithms for protecting data. But what happens when there is a problem with AI?
Managing dysfunctional AI and how we can efficiently troubleshoot it is at the forefront of the issues that AI governance is working to address. In addition, data privacy regarding AI is a new world for experts to navigate, as AI has never been so prevalent throughout the data journey as it is now. Therefore, organizations need to govern the use of AI in data protection. Staying diligent concerning these security methods will be essential in helping ensure that automated processes aren’t accidentally exposing sensitive data.
- Consumer Privacy UX
A trend we’ve seen over the last several months is putting more privacy power into consumers’ hands. Many privacy regulations require that apps and websites provide data transparency. They need to tell people what data they’re collecting, how it is collected, and what they do with it. People also need an “out” to get their data back. These needs have led to consumer privacy UX (user experience) becoming a “thing.” You can think of this as a centralized privacy portal. A place people can access privacy-related settings in various apps. As a result, users will have better visibility into the utilization of their data.
- Increased Scrutiny of Remote Employee Monitoring
The pandemic has forever changed the global workforce. Many organizations now run completely remote offices or use a mix of remote and in-office staff. The dramatic increase in people working from home has led to data collection changes. Companies are ramping up their monitoring of those employees working off-site. But this type of monitoring opens a can of worms regarding data privacy. Organizations need to ensure that they aren’t infringing on the rights of their staff. Individual rights should always be most pertinent when putting monitoring in place on employee devices.
For example, approximately 49% of remote employees use their personal computers for work. Companies often put endpoint device monitoring in place for security reasons. They need to ensure they are not gathering or backing up personal data. That would be data owned by the employee and not the company.
- Data Localization
One of the concerns when the social app TikTok became popular, relates to location. With the firm being a China-based company, people are worried about the privacy of their data. TikTok initially stored its user data on servers governed by the Chinese government—a country with very different data privacy rules than the US and other countries.
Data localization is going to become more prevalent. Increasingly organizations look at where their cloud data is stored. Where a server resides will directly tie to the privacy rules and regulations protecting the data. Thus, companies and governments are now asking a question of cloud providers. That question is, “Where is my data stored?” Many want their data to be as close to home as possible.
- Privacy-Enhancing Computation (PEC)
Data privacy by design is a relatively new term. Using privacy-enhancing computation is a way that AI is helping cybersecurity. By using PEC as a built-in component of software and apps, developers provide value to clients. They address privacy concerns by making data protection more automated. Please look for PEC components in data analytics when shopping for business tools. When was the Last Time You Had a Compliance Check?
How are your data privacy protections?
Are you risking a penalty due to lax controls? Give PCS a call! We can help with a compliance checkup.
PCS used the article with permission from The Technology Press.