7 Data Privacy Hurdles Enterprises Commonly Face

Enterprises face a variety of hurdles in ensuring data privacy. Given an increasingly strict regulatory environment, it’s important to overcome these and other hurdles to ensure the privacy and security of valuable customer data.

Why Enterprises Need to Focus on Data Privacy

Customers expect companies – especially big companies – to ensure the privacy of the data they collect. A recent McKinsey survey revealed 71% of consumers said they’d stop doing business with any company that gave away their personal information without permission.

This has led to new and more restrictive legislation designed to safeguard data privacy. Legislation such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) threaten large fines for noncompliance. It’s in every enterprise’s best interests to comply with these regulations and better safeguard the privacy of their customers’ data.

7 Common Data Privacy Hurdles

What hurdles do enterprises today face in ensuring data privacy? There are seven main hurdles.

1. Device Proliferation

The number of devices connected to enterprise networks continues to rapidly increase. With the COVID-19 pandemic leading to a massive increase in remote workers, enterprises now find employees using their personal computers, tablets, and smartphones to access their corporate networks. Since many of these devices connect over less-secure home and public wireless networks, this results in an increased risk to all enterprise data – and to the data privacy of customer records.

2. IoT Growth

Adding to this device proliferation is the unprecedented growth in the Internet of Things (IoT). Statista estimates that there were almost 36 billion IoT devices installed worldwide at the end of 2021, and this number is expected to more than double to 75 billion devices by 2025. A significant number of these devices, from smart lighting to smart printers to smart security devices, are installed in businesses and other large organizations.

IoT devices are not only multiplying, they’re also bringing an increased risk of cyberattacks and data breaches. That’s because many of these simple devices lack the basic security protocols common on more traditional devices. This creates a growing number of enticing targets to cybercriminals, who can use these vulnerable endpoints to gain access to corporate networks and the valuable data stored there.

3. Exponential Data Growth

The increasing number of devices capable of generating and collecting data has led to an incredible increase in the amount of data available. IDC estimates that 64.2 zettabytes of data were created in 2020 and that we’ll see a 23% compound annual growth rate in data from 2020 to 2025. That’s 1.7MB of new data created every second. While some of this data is ephemeral and doesn’t require storage, it all needs protection.

4. Huge Number of Open Vulnerabilities

The large and increasing number of open vulnerabilities continues to be a major issue in protecting data privacy. According to National Vulnerability Database, more than 18,000 new vulnerabilities were recognized in 2020, adding to the 150,000 previous entries in the database. Not surprisingly, new vulnerabilities lead to new data breaches.

5. Increasing Costs

All IT staff know that it’s becoming increasingly costly to manage and protect these growing amounts of data. In addition to the costs of collecting all this data, the typical enterprise has data storage costs, rising staff salaries, the growing cost of cybersecurity efforts, and now the cost of complying with the growing number of data privacy regulations. That’s in addition to substantial costs incurred if a company experiences a data breach.

6. Increasing Number of Regulations

The increasing number of governmental and industry regulations adds a level of complexity to the task of ensuring data privacy. Organizations have to stay up-to-date no the ever-changing regulatory landscape and update their systems and procedures to ensure compliance with all applicable regulations. It isn’t easy and it isn’t cheap; according to a Ponemon Institute/Globalscape study, the yearly cost for regulatory compliance for an average organization is $3.5 million. (That’s still less expensive than the cost of noncompliance, which at $9.4 million, is more than triple the compliance cost.)

7. Human Error

Human beings make everything more difficult. Dealing with employee mistakes remains a significant hurdle in ensuring the privacy of customer data. Lazy and ill-informed staff insist on using weak passwords, accidentally delete important data, and continue to fall for phishing and other social engineering scams. Even the best data privacy protections can’t protect against a single employee making human mistakes.

Use Wickr to Help Enhance Your Organization’s Data Privacy

Securing employee communications is an essential component of your company’s data privacy strategy. Wickr’s secure communications and collaboration platform uses end-to-end encryption and other military-grade security to ensure that text, voice, and video communications and data files containing valuable customer data cannot be hijacked or breached by data thieves. Improve your enterprise’s data privacy by employing Wickr – and ensure that all of your customers’ data remains private and secure.

Contact Wickr today to learn more about how secure communications can enhance data privacy in your organization.