Legal Definitions - data protection

Data protection refers to the comprehensive set of practices, policies, and technologies designed to safeguard information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. It encompasses measures to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data, whether it is stored digitally on computers and networks or physically in documents and files.

Here are some examples illustrating data protection:

• A healthcare provider implementing robust cybersecurity measures: A hospital uses strong encryption for all patient medical records stored on its servers and requires multi-factor authentication for staff to access these systems. They also conduct regular security audits and staff training on data handling protocols.

  This illustrates data protection because the hospital is actively employing various methods (encryption, multi-factor authentication, audits, training) to prevent unauthorized individuals from viewing or altering sensitive patient health information, thereby ensuring its confidentiality and integrity.

• A financial institution securing physical customer documents: A bank stores all paper loan applications and account opening forms in locked filing cabinets within a restricted-access vault. After a legally mandated retention period, these documents are professionally shredded by a certified service.

  This demonstrates data protection by showing physical methods (locked cabinets, secure vault, restricted access) used to prevent the loss or unauthorized viewing of sensitive financial data. The shredding process further ensures that information is securely destroyed when no longer needed, preventing future unauthorized access.

• An e-commerce company performing regular data backups: An online retail company automatically backs up all customer order histories and payment transaction data to a separate, secure cloud storage service every night. In the event of a primary server failure or a cyberattack, they can restore their entire database from these backups.

  This example highlights data protection through ensuring data availability and integrity. By creating and securely storing copies of their data, the company protects against the physical loss or corruption of information, allowing them to recover and continue operations even after a major incident, thus safeguarding customer and business data.