Every data-driven business is terrified of the prospect of a data breach. Exposing sensitive data could mean reputational damage, loss of clients, and heavy fines under emerging privacy laws. But every data-driven business also wants to make use of its data. Business intelligence (BI) platforms allow anyone to build complex and detailed dashboards that help them understand the organization’s current state. How do you resolve this tension? One approach is to build a privacy-first data structure.

Unfortunately, most of us have had our sensitive data or personal information compromised at one point or another. Whether the leaked data involves credit cards, a bank account number, a social security number, or an email address, nearly everyone has been a victim of a third-party data breach. In 2020, over 155 million people in the U.S. — nearly half the country's population — experienced unauthorized data exposure.

When people share their personal information with an organization, they’re performing an act of trust. They trust you to keep their data safe from hackers, and they trust you to use their data only for legitimate purposes. While many organizations honor this trust, others do not. As a result, governments worldwide are rushing to pass data protection legislation that puts the power back in the hands of people.

Businesses large and small depend on access to information in order to make smarter, data-driven decisions. And much of that data is personal, sensitive, or confidential. So how can you balance this demand for big data with the need to protect the individuals whom this data describes? When it comes to personally identifiable information (PII), there are multiple very good reasons why you should keep it securely under lock and key.

Businesses of all sizes and entire industries rely on analyzing personal data to beat their competitors and better serve their customers. For example, information from your CRM (customer relationship management) software can help you understand how to convert more leads in a particular area or from a specific demographic.

Data breaches can happen to any company, regardless of size or technical resources. In April 2021, Facebook’s reputation took a massive hit when a data breach impacted more than half a billion users. The worst kind of data breach involves personally identifiable information (PII). PII is essentially any data that contains sensitive details about real people, such as customers and employees.

When you’re working with personally identifiable information (PII), you may have to follow data privacy laws that govern how you must handle it. If the PII comes from an educational institution, that law is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, also known as FERPA.

Data privacy is an increasingly complex and contentious topic. The appropriate use of data and transparency to the potential uses of the data are at the center of debate amongst the largest Big Tech companies. The protection and controls around data become increasingly complex when used in the context of banking and insurance activities. Personal and confidential information carries heightened sensitivity in the light of financial, health and insurance activities.

How vulnerable is your sensitive data? Your data policies may put this information at risk of being breached. An ad hoc approach for dealing with this data makes it difficult to maintain your organization’s cybersecurity. Data obfuscation holds the key to improving your security and making it easier to use your data, but it must be driven by your policies to be effective.

When cyberattacks take out business systems, organizations suffer from direct and indirect financial losses. When healthcare systems go down, it’s a matter of life and death. Healthcare organizations were already a frequent target of cybercriminals, and the pandemic has made this situation worse. Infosecurity Magazine reports that healthcare data breaches will increase by 3x in 2021, at a time when so many healthcare providers are burnt out and exhausted from battling the pandemic.