In this day and age, the age of the internet, the topic of data protection is gaining more and more importance and attention. Data, especially sensitive data, should, indeed, must be protected from misuse.
What data is sensitive? How do I handle this data or data in general? Isn’t that a matter of opinion?
OH NO! If everyone were allowed to decide for themselves how to handle data or which data they consider sensitive, it would surely end in one huge chaos very soon.
An example: You give your contact data (name, e-mail, telephone number) to a potential business partner and assume that he treats it like sensitive data, which it is. This is because all data that can be attributed in any way to a specific natural person is personal data and therefore sensitive data. Your potential business partner, however, has a different view of data protection and passes on your data indiscriminately to others. Suddenly you’re receiving junk mail and phone calls from people and companies you don’t know. Quite annoying and time-consuming. I think that a partnership is no longer an option for you because there is no basis of trust between you. To prevent such misuse of data from happening, the EU has the GDPR, which every individual has to abide by.
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation.
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It is a regulation of the European Union that regulates how data and especially personal data may be collected or processed by companies, associations, authorities and private individuals. On the one hand, this is intended to give citizens better control over their data and, on the other hand, to ensure the free movement of data within the European Single Market.
Since the GDPR is a regulation and not just a directive, it applies directly in all EU Member States and does not have to be implemented by a national law. The aim of the GDPR is to regulate data protection uniformly in the EU.
Those who ignore the provisions of the GDPR, like the potential business partner in our example, must expect high GDPR fines (up to 20 million euros). For globally active companies, it can be even more expensive, namely up to 4% of the previous year’s global turnover. Do not take the topic of data protection lightly, because mishandling data can be very expensive.
What is your position on data protection?
How do you handle data?
What does data protection look like in your company or in your private life?
Image credit: Header- and Featured image from Gerd Altmann on Pixabay
