It’s Data Privacy Week 2025, and in today’s digital age, maintaining data privacy is more critical than ever. As recognized by the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA), Data Privacy Week is intended to empower and raise awareness for individuals and businesses to respect data privacy, safeguard data and enable trust over data usage.
At Schneider Downs, we are committed to guiding you through ongoing data privacy challenges. Here are five practical tips for organizations to consider in their efforts to protect critical data and ultimately minimize the risk of data breaches:
1. Implement AI & Data Governance
AI and data governance are critical in building a comprehensive data privacy and protection strategy, as organizations increasingly rely on AI tools and large datasets.
- AI Governance: As organizations embrace the use of AI, they must implement controls to ensure AI systems are designed, deployed and monitored responsibly. This includes avoiding bias, ensuring data privacy in AI training, and complying with appropriate use guidelines. Strong governance frameworks help to minimize risks associated with AI systems and protect sensitive data from unintended misuse.
- Data Governance: Develop governance policies and procedures to ensure data is appropriately collected, stored, structured, processed and shared securely and in compliance with regulations (i.e., GDPR, CCPA). This includes creating a data inventory, assigning data stewards and monitoring data flows.
2. Encrypt Sensitive Data
Apply end-to-end encryption for sensitive data both in transit and at rest. This ensures that even if data is intercepted or stolen, it remains unusable to unauthorized parties.
3. Regularly Update Software & Patch Vulnerabilities
Conduct vulnerability assessments and penetration tests periodically to ensure all systems, applications, software and hardware are up to date to minimize the risk of security vulnerabilities.
4. Train Employees on Data Privacy & Security Best Practices
Create a culture of accountability by emphasizing the importance of safeguarding sensitive information. For this to be effective, an organization must provide ongoing education about phishing, password hygiene and handling sensitive information, as employees are often the first line of defense against data breaches.
5. Establish & Exercise an Incident Response Plan
Develop and exercise a clear and actionable incident response plan that allows you to detect, respond and recover to a security incident to effectively mitigate the impact of a breach. It remains critical that those designated understand the steps for notifying affected parties, reporting to regulators and implementing recovery measures.
Can your organization do a better job of measuring its security and privacy posture? Hopefully, these five tips help you start thinking about how your organization can better proactively manage risks, improve resilience and minimize the impact of potential breaches.
Have a data privacy question or concern? Contact us to help you assess and enhance your privacy and security posture through a tailored assessment specific to your needs.
About Data Privacy Week
As recognized by the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA), Data Privacy Week is an international effort to empower individuals and organizations to respect privacy, safeguard data and enable trust. Check out the resources on the Data Privacy Week website to learn ways to more effectively manage your personal information and understand, from an organizational perspective, why it is important to respect user data.
About IT Risk Advisory
Schneider Downs’ team of experienced risk advisory professionals focus on collaborating with your organization to identify and effectively mitigate risks. Our goal is to understand not only the risks related to potential loss to the organization, but to drive solutions that add value to your organization and advise on opportunities to ensure minimal disruption to your business.
To learn more, visit our dedicated IT Risk Advisory page.
