Cybersecurity requires time, energy, and money to protect the data. Now we live in a more technologically-advanced world that deals with the rise in cloud services. Cloud-based services have enhanced the importance of data storage. It is carving the way for knowing the importance of data security.
14 Reasons to Care About the Importance of Data Security
With the increase of internet based services through websites and apps, the importance of data security has also heightened. Millions of data includes the database to get information of the consumers that acts as fuel for several businesses. But immoral activity and hacking make the data vulnerable. Apart from hacking, there are other reasons as well that indicates the importance of data security in today’s business strategy.
1. Cybercrime
When valuable data is stored, criminal activity will lurk at the corner! The sole purpose of data security revolves around dealing with cybercrime. Cybercrimes mostly try to possess certain information that can make any consumer uncomfortable. Data related to driver’s license numbers, information related to an employee, patients, students, donor, credit card numbers, or social security numbers are prone to get stolen. Data security primarily works to prevent the leakage of any information of this sort.
2. Data Security and Privacy
There was a time when physical possession was counted as valuables, and people used to take care of that. But with the changing time, data has become as valuable as any earthly possession. The cloud services have facilitated the direct and active management of the users. As an ample amount of private data is stored everyday, it evokes the risk of manhandling. Thus it has become necessary to secure the privacy of the data to save the consumers from any threat.
3. Assessment
Data collection mostly deals with raw data. This type of data is not well synchronized and creates the option for data assessment. Especially the IT population helps in various assessments and judgment to support the assistance virtually. Their work and need for accurate evaluation are well scattered in the sectors of automation especially in administration, simplified management procedure, cost reduction, development testing and application, proficient use of resources, and so on.
4. Responsibility
The maintenance of private data is the critical responsibility of any institution that is dealing with public data. This responsibility helps in judging the righteousness of a company, adds to the brand value, and creates a loyal customer base. Information such as credit card numbers, legal and financial data, social security numbers, and so on must be dealt with proper responsibility to gain and maintain trust of the consumers.
5. Integrity
Data supports different research, report paper, calculation, and statistical and mathematical acknowledgement. Thus it must be accurate and trustworthy. The term data integrity generally refers to the reliability and precision of it. Variations or compromised data from the source cannot be taken into account. The importance of data security emphatically ensures its genuinity. For data integrity, storage consolidation can be used.
6. Creating Accessibility
Data is not something to be kept in control. The more straightforward its accessibility is, the more it will be useful for better customer support. The key is to balance between creating the availability of data for digital transformation while ensuring its protection. Companies and organizations need to vouch for data accessibility to the people. Easy accessibility of data brings the risk of maltreating it, and thus security and classification before its use is vital. Chris McClean, the VP and Research Director of Security & Risk, at Forrester has supported the accessibility of data by saying “How can we be digitally disruptive or digitally transformative if our people can’t get access to the data they need?”
7. Agreement
Data security follows many regulations to maintain the agreement for consumer satisfaction and safety. Among a list of the accords, security breach counts as one of the crucial breach. It is nothing but unauthorized access to unencrypted or unsecured data. Unauthorized access of data, applications, services, networks can hamper the agreement clause, and the protection of that agreement plays a vital role in cybersecurity.
8. Improve Brand Value
The primary goal of an organization is to protect the privacy of the consumers. Consistency in their approach and transparency helps in creating the brand value for any organization. The right method of saving and securing data creates dependency and trust of the consumers to increase the brand value. While dealing with data, any organization must keep the trust factor intact to maintain the brand value for a more extended period.
9. Support Business Ethics
Business ethics or a code of ethics is a term that is entangled with business policies. This business ethics determines the strength of personal data and dependency on it to engage consumers. Once it is violated, it becomes difficult to stay in the ‘good book’ of the consumers and gain their trust again. As a result, a foundation can get shattered. So to stay right, provide support, and gain trust of the consumers for the long-run, data security plays a vital role.
10. Ethical Access to Global Data
While cybercrime creates a fear of losing personal data, no one can back-out from providing personal data for one’s benefit. There lies the importance of ethical access to global data. Data security offers the support to help in the ethical access of data where consumers can take advantage of it without fearing their personal information being vulnerable with a possibility of getting exposed.
11. Ensure Trust for Public, Investor, and Consumer
The importance of data security was well acknowledged when several international brands and companies compromised the personal information of their customers. One of such shocking instances came to light when Marriott International announced the compromising personal data of more than 500 million customers in 2018. The personal details of the customers, including their passport ID, credit card number, contact detail, list of preferred customers, were all exposed. Brands, such as Yahoo, eBay, and Uber, have also gone through such situations. Yahoo’s infamous data breach case in 2016 cost the company $85 million and lost its brand name.
12. Consumer Loyalty
Consumers put their private data to support a business, and it becomes the responsibility of any ethical company to stay loyal to the customers and respect their data privacy. To stay in business for the long term, it is vital to focus on the importance of data security and build a consumer loyalty base.
13. Manage Data
Data security is not only about storing data. It is also essential to manage it properly for better accessibility. The right management process also includes the prevention of data leakage and any personal threat due to that. Data management is one of the integral tasks of data security where along with simplification and automation of administration, it is also essential to safeguard data from viruses that can corrupt information and cost consumers’ loyalty.
14. Support Innovation
Bringing security and privacy controls through new technologies add to more secure business. Technology plays a significant role here. Satisfying consumers and fulfilling their needs to remain secured are the latest trend of technology. More innovation to create secure privacy-protecting devices justifies the importance of data security. As technology is getting smarter and well equipped, creating situations for more innovative ideas to secure the data.
In a Nutshell
Data privacy should not be treated as an added benefit to the consumers or as a differentiator for an organization. It is also not something to be taken care of when it gets legally obligatory. Data security is a standard necessity for any company or service sector that uses personal data. The importance of data security assures the flourishing of any organization with ethical business, adding more brand value, and creating a loyal customer base without compromising a single data!
She is a content marketing professional with 4 years of experience. She has her expertise in corporate communications, along with various field of content writing and editing ranging from e-commerce, B2B content, market research, as well as entertainment. She believes content is able to add a great impact in web-marketing and thus she is focused to reach the height with her ever strengthening ability in every sphere of writing and editing, where her content will make a difference in marketing and business strategies.
