Personal data processing has become an indispensable part of the modern digital world – be it a small business, or large organisation with hundreds of employees, no company can run optimally without collecting and using customer data.
The skyrocketing increase in data demand and processing has made governing authorities embed and enforce strong data protection ordinances to ensure no one can misuse individuals’ personal data. For instance, the GDPR/General Data Protection, EU’s stringent data protection legislation, is applied to every business that processes customer data within the EU and EEA and beyond.
But what factors determine how to handle personal information? To learn more about it, read on.
What Is Personal Data?
Any data associated with an identified or identifiable individual, for instance, PII, PHI, contact details, etc., that can reveal the identity of that person is known as personal data.
Though almost all international data protection and privacy laws define personal data differently, the concept is identical. For instance, GDPR covers all pseudonymised, de-identified, or encrypted personal details that can be decrypted to identify someone.
What is personal privacy examples, and what comes under personal information? Let’s go through:
- Names
- Contact details
- Social media accounts
- Email accounts
- Race and ethnic details
- Physical, social, or psychological details
- Genetics and biometrics
- Financial information like bank and credit card numbers
- PII, PHI, and intellectual property
- Political and religious opinions, etc.
But what is personal data used for? Personal data is used by organisations and even government bodies of a country for various purposes – from identifying employees and tailoring offers to sending personalised messages to hyper-targeted consumers to setting public welfare policies in critical areas, data is essential for almost every task. For instance, a combination of details about age, gender, or designation can help the supervisory authority of a business recognise a staff member.
Now, how can identifiability of personal information be reduced? Tokenization, enabling two-factor authentication, standard encryption, limiting user access, etc., can help secure PII.
What is GDPR?
GDPR is the world’s most rigorous data security law that gives EU residents more power over their data and lays down rules to organisations to abide by handling personal data processing.
Adopted by the European Parliament and European Council in April 2016, replacing the Data Directive 95/46/EC, GDPR came into action fully in May 2018, after a two-year transition period.
After the end of the Brexit transition period on December 31, 2020, the UK is now the third country for the EU. Any UK organisation must adhere to the UK GDPR and slightly upgraded DPA 2018.
What is Personal Data Processing
Personal data processing means the operations and activities, for instance, data acquisition, storage, manipulation, transmit, disclosure, and more upon an individual’s data for valid reasons – it can be executed through a manual process or a combination of manual and automated ones.
What Factors Determine How to Handle Personal Information
We have already stated that any organisation handling customer data must follow some regulations while processing data. And in the event of a security incident, the data controller must inform the supervisory authority and the affected data subjects about the data breach within 72-hours of identification.
But what factors determine how data processing should be performed? As GDPR has set an international benchmark, let’s look through the factors that regulate data processing and help companies comply with GDPR.
Fair, Lawful, and Transparent Processing
Art. 5 in GDPR emphasises the significance of lawful, fair, and transparent data processing – three leading aspects each organisation must adhere to.
With lawfulness, GDPR implies that every company must have a valid reason for processing user information, for instance, for:
- Fulfilling any legislative responsibility
- Safeguarding the interests of that individual
- Fulfilling public interest
So, before a business processes client information, it must set a valid purpose and ensure further processing does not override the set objective and user rights.
With fair processing, GDPR indicates that a company must ensure no customer information will be handed over to third-party scammers for fraud intents and inform users about which of their personal data is being compiled and used.
Transparency is innately associated with fairness – providing users with contact details of the data controller collecting their data. They should have a clear concept of why and how their information is being gathered and processed.
Purpose Limitation
According to GDPR Article 89(1), organisations must establish explicit, specific, and fair objectives, and processing activities must comply with the set goal. However, additional processing operations for archiving objectives in the historical study or public interest are not conflicting with the initially established intent.
Data Minimisation and Data Accuracy
With data minimisation, GDPR implies that a data collector should limit data acquisition to what is essential to accomplish the set goal.
The reasons are two:
- First off, even if a scammer breaches data security, a limited amount of information can be accessed only.
- Secondly, it becomes effortless for the organisation to ensure only accurate and updated personal details are retained and used.
Again, another vital factor of precisely processing personal information is confirming data accuracy. It means the organisation must scrutinise the accumulated data and take necessary actions to rectify and erase the incomplete and incorrect ones.
Storage Limitation
No organisation or authority can store EU residents’ personal data longer than required; they can be exempted and hold data for longer if the information is used for any public interest or analysis purposes only (Art 89(1)).
Data Confidentiality and Integrity
It means that a company dealing with personal data processing must ensure utmost security against data breaches, data misapplication, identity theft, unauthorised access, and damage by employing proper technical measures.
Steps to Help Your Organization Remain Compliant on a Global Scale
- The first step to comply with the relevant data protection law is to gain proper knowledge about where the laws apply, responsibilities of the data processing entity, how non-compliance can cripple the optimal operation of your organisation, and what data subjects rights you should disclose and ensure.
- To ensure your company stays on top of international data security regulation, training and educating your staff about their responsibilities is a must. For instance, GDPR makes it compulsory for a company that processes personal data on a large scale to appoint a DPO (Data Protection Officer) to oversee its data security strategy, implement it, and train employees.
- Reviewing and updating your privacy policy is another essential step to comply with data protection legislation. For example, according to GDPR, companies must review their privacy policy and offer data subjects a clear, precise, and easy-to-understand privacy note, including all essential information.
- Ensure scheduling personal data audit
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