Corporate Privacy Protection

Many of the principles of individual privacy protection also apply to corporations. Education is important. Many people aren’t fully aware of the implications that Internet connectivity has, and the ease with which privacy can be compromised, and the basic steps required to prevent this.

Employee Trust

It is assumed that individuals can trust themselves, but in a corporate setting, privacy can only be maintained if everyone with access to private information can be trusted. The more people with access, the more likely it is one or more will leak the information, perhaps inadvertently. There is no easy solution to the trust issue, except to only grant access to sensitive or private information to people who are trusted.

Information Management

Companies can often greatly reduce the privacy risk by employing a simple need-to-know type security, granting access to information only to those who need to know. The less people with access to information, the less likely it is to become a privacy concern. Employees or customers who require access to specific information are authenticated in some way, which prevents anyone else from accessing that information. This authentication information is itself carefully guarded, and a hierarchy of information access is maintained.

Malicious Access

There’s then another level of people who may attempt to gain maliciously access to private information. They may try to circumvent any measures put in place to protect a company or individual’s privacy. Companies install complex software and hardware measures to protect against malicious entry and loss of data in a never-ending war against Internet intruders, but most malicious actions are performed by employees within the company. Therefore, measures need to be taken to ensure that private information is secured from everyone, all the time – except those that need to access it, and that they have been screened. Other systems should monitor who access the information and when, so that if a privacy breach has occurred, the company can respond accordingly.

Customer Education

Customers themselves must also bear a responsible part in keeping the information a corporation holds about them private, however they can’t be expected to do this if they’re not aware of the risks or the procedure to take. Customers need to be told how to choose and keep secure passwords, how to use a secure browser when accessing secure online information, that a company will never request certain private information via email and various other things that will allow a customer to keep their information secure and avoid tricksters attempting to fraud them.

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