Assessing the Importance of Data Privacy

Data privacy will always hold significant importance for virtual users around the world. From a single individual to a prestigious organization, data privacy plays a vital role in ensuring that all of your personal information stays in a secure space.

As data has become more digitalized over the years, our information is being shared on various online platforms, putting it at risk of being exposed to anyone who wishes to make use of it for malicious reasons. This is where data privacy comes in to help counter this dilemma.

What is Data Privacy?

Data privacy, also known as information privacy, deals with the maintenance, storage, and access of valuable data or information. The various types of private data include details like financial transaction history, credit card numbers, and other types of digitalized information that privately belongs to a person or an organization.

The Importance of Data Privacy  

Most processes that take place online require us to share our information for various purposes such as logging onto a website, online transactions, personal messages, images, and the list goes on.

Unfortunately, many of these sites are authentic and can expose your sensitive data to third parties without your permission – and often, there is very little you can do to stop them. Moreover, there are also many individuals, especially children who use the internet, who are unable to protect their private spaces.

Once your private data gets into the wrong hands, bad things happen. For example, companies can build empires from valuable information collected and stored over the years. Without proper data security, hackers can easily breach their systems and steal their information, causing large organizations to come crumbling down in only a matter of minutes. These are usually caused by rival companies who need the data to improve their own status, or hackers tend to sell this valuable information at the right price.

A breach in hospital systems is another way that hackers exploit private information to misuse its content that can significantly impact a company’s position or a person’s wellbeing. Similarly, cyber-crimes in educational institutions can place students’ personal information at risk and become victims of identity theft committed by cybercriminals.

Is There No Hope?

Since this is a worldwide issue, many leading business figures worldwide are working towards creating a means of providing a safe digital space for everyone.

Zahra Shah is a British-Pakistani entrepreneur, who is a Co-Founder, Non-Executive Director and Investor at Seers (a leading privacy and consent management platform). She firmly believes in an individual’s human right to be able to protect their privacy. Hence, she has been investing in building innovative privacy solutions to further advance this cause on a global scale.

Consequently, one of her major accomplishments includes helping to build and grow Seers – a company that provides an innovative “one-stop-shop” privacy compliance platform with cutting-edge digital solutions covering consent management, assessments & certifications, documentation & policies, privacy ops and an advisors platform. Seers help companies of all sizes to solve the problem of data privacy compliance by enabling them to securely monetize their data and effectively become compliant with global data privacy regulations including GDPR, CCPA, PECR, LGPD, etc. This has enabled companies to protect themselves from hefty fines, loss of reputation and business.