As an ongoing National Cybersecurity Alliance partner, Defendify is excited to be an official Champion of Data Privacy Week each year. As Data Privacy Week Champions, our goal is to empower and guide organizations on ways to protect the privacy of those they do business with and deploy data privacy awareness training.

Data Privacy Across 52 Weeks of the Year

Data Privacy Week is an annual campaign that the National Cybersecurity Alliance hosts each January with the goal of educating individuals and businesses about the importance of online privacy. Its purpose is to generate awareness about the importance of privacy, highlight easy ways to protect personal information, and remind organizations that respecting privacy is good for business.

The NCSA campaign helps remind all organizations that they are responsible for keeping individuals’ information safe from unauthorized access and ensuring fair, relevant, and legitimate data collection and processing–and this responsibility extends well beyond Data Privacy Week, every day, all 52 weeks of the year.

As technology evolves, data collection practices are becoming increasingly unavoidable, making it imperative that organizations be open and honest about collecting, using, and sharing consumers’ personal information. Organizations also must coach their employees on why this matters.

5 Ways to Help Employees Understand Data Privacy

1. Create a Culture of Privacy

Looking at your organization’s Technology Acceptable Use Policy is a good jumping-off point. Create a privacy awareness campaign to educate employees on your company’s privacy around the office. This could be on an internal message board, in company newsletters, or in emails and digital messaging channels. Teaching employees their role in your privacy culture and reinforcing that throughout their careers is paramount to keeping data privacy front and center in their minds.

2. Organize Continuous Data Privacy Awareness Training

Engage staff by asking them to consider how privacy and data security apply to their daily work —inviting external speakers to talk to employees about why privacy matters can be hard in the age of remote work. We suggest using Cybersecurity Awareness Training that managers can play on-demand in a classroom or webinar setting. Employees are taught by security experts the basics of defending their organization’s privacy and then quizzed on their level of knowledge.

3. Help Employees Manage Their Individual Privacy

Better security and privacy behaviors at home will translate to better security and privacy practices at work. This is especially important now when the line between one’s home and the office is blurred. Teach employees how to update their privacy and security settings on personal accounts. Phishing simulations can help reinforce the best behaviors in avoiding attacks.

4. Add Privacy to the Employee Toolbox

Give your employees tools they can use to improve their privacy. A good option is a virtual private network (VPNs) to secure their connections. Physical tools could include company-branded camera covers and privacy screens for their devices. Hanging or sharing eye-catching awareness posters is a way to maintain visual reminders on maintaining a proper cybersecurity posture.

5. Maintain Oversight of Partners and Vendors

Your employees may not be privacy or security experts, so it can be critical to build mechanisms that make it easy for them to report privacy or security concerns. The sooner you know about a breach, the faster it can be contained. The longer an attack continues, the higher risk of damage; therefore, the higher the potential financial loss. Help stop an attack before your employee can even discover it with managed detection and response technology. It is always-on, closely watching activity, analyzing data trends, identifying anomalies, and counteracting developing threats in real-time.

More Tips and Free Cybersecurity Tools

• Check out the ABC’s of Cybersecurity: Strategies to build a strong cyber-posture to learn how cyber threats have evolved and what security vulnerabilities every organization should look out for.
• Consider requesting a free trial of the Defendify Cybersecurity Essentials Package: 3 FREE tools to help you discover and address vulnerabilities across your organization.