Data Privacy Day on 28 January is a great way to kickstart your data protection upgrades for the next 12 months, with ‘Put Privacy First’ as this year’s theme.
Taking data privacy into account at the beginning of a project is the most efficient way of future-proofing your services and systems. January is the perfect time to look at the trends, opportunities and threats on the horizon this year, and how Restore Technology can help you meet those challenges with confidence.
Trends
The Data (Use and Access) Bill (DUA Bill) is currently making its way through the UK houses of parliament, with debates placing privacy up against the government’s desire to grow the economy by enabling innovation and efficient data use.
When you throw into the mix the recently announced AI Opportunities Action Plan, growing and enabling technologies whose learning capabilities are currently trained by scraping the internet for data, with scant regard for the rights of that data’s owners, there will be an impact. What type of impact remains to be seen. The use of AI and any changes brought about by a potentially new law around data privacy, then, are two trending areas that need to be kept under close surveillance.
Threats
As a Cabinet Office report prepared by Detica over a dozen years ago stated: “New technology has enabled old crimes to be committed in new, more subtle ways”. Bad actors, whether lone wolves, gangs or rogue governments, are constantly finding vulnerabilities and ways to exploit them. Harness human error and ignorance to these system/process vulnerabilities (which we could call ‘carelessness’) and it becomes clear why UK businesses, and individuals, lose many billions of pounds each year through data theft and the resulting financial and reputational damage.
‘New technology’ has only ramped up the threat for all of us to be the victims of crime and we all need to take greater care in handling and processing information. Two of those threats you can help remove by taking the right steps, and the third you can help mitigate. Read on to find out which…
Opportunities
Security, operational and financial efficiency and sustainability are key to handling threats and keeping you poised for opportunities. The opportunity with Data Privacy Day is to take a long, hard look at your data protection, and we suggest all or some of the following checks to get the ball rolling.
Update privacy policies – include areas such as password and access protocols, device use, data collection and cookies policies and help remove elements of carelessness and human error.
Risk assess your data controls and cyber hygiene – the UK’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey (April 2024) notes that larger businesses tend to have more resources to focus on the following areas but if you are a micro or smaller business, it’s essential you consider:
- up-to-date malware protection
- restricting admin rights
- network firewalls
- agreed processes for phishing emails
The overarching need to comply with GDPR, in addition to any industry-specific governance requirements feeds into all the above. In short, these measures are the bare minimum for a well-run organisation.
Conduct data privacy awareness training – ignorance is never a good look and it’s not going to wash as an excuse with your customers should your systems and processes get hacked or personal data be ‘lost’. Educating all those who work with you, and for you, is a keystone of good data security and helps reduce the known unknown of human error.
Consider using compliance tools – generative AI systems for tracking and flagging software, hardware, obsolescence, licensing, and so on help you stay on top of your legal and regulatory responsibilities.
Demystify compliance for your employees AND your customers – in terms of regulatory protections that extend out to data destruction, this is where Restore Technology enters the frame.
Restore Technology and secure data destruction
We are market leaders in complete IT lifecycle services, helping you manage and protect your physical and digital assets throughout their usefulness to you. Our policy of continuous improvement means we don’t simply react to emerging threats, as discussed above, we anticipate them through rigorous analysis and refinement. This means our tools and techniques remain immediate and current for whenever they are required.
The delete button won’t do!
A crucial aspect for our offer of enhanced data protection, throughout those assets’ lifecycles, is our secure data destruction service. This might come as part of the GDPR-compliant destruction of laptops, servers, desktops, and so on, or it might be as part of a package to then upgrade and ‘recycle’ your assets either through re-sale or donation. Either route requires great care to be taken in how data contained on those assets is destroyed.
Chain of custody
Firstly, we establish a fully documented chain of custody throughout the process, from collection – in hard drive lockboxes if you prefer – to transfer in a GPS-tracked vehicle to one of our security-controlled destruction centres.
Accreditations
Secondly, whichever route you choose, you can trust the fact that we hold the highest accreditations from the NPSA and the NCSC, who have complete confidence in the security of our procedures so you can feel complete peace of mind.
Data erasure
Next, our enhanced security measures include data erasure or data wiping by serialisation, a powerful solution that overwrites any possible echoes of data, so that it is totally unintelligible.
Industrial-grade shredders
Lastly, we use industrial-grade shredders to reduce hard drives, laptops, desktops, IDE, SATA, solid-state, and SCSI models into tiny 2mm fragments, rendering data recovery impossible. For an additional layer of security, we scan and record hard drive serial numbers before on-site destruction.
All our work, all our securely vetted teams of professionals, and all our machinery is focused on providing you with the ultimate defence against data breaches, making sure your confidential data is destroyed for good. We are backed by our accreditations for the ISO standards of 9001, 14001, 27001 and 45001, as well as operating to HMG Infosec Standard 5 level, among others.
Keep your data secure
Want to know more?
Find out how you can get your IT lifecycle circle on to the right track in 2025 by placing data privacy and protection at the top of your wish list. Get in touch with one of our knowledgeable customer services team on 0333 060 1920 or click below.
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