October 2: Privacy Protection & Safeguarding Personal Data
Our second day of Cyber Security Awareness Month is about controlling access to your personal information and how it is used. Personal data is now constantly being collected, processed and shared. Privacy protection is about exercising control over who has access to your personal data and how it is used.
Cyber awareness helps everyone maintain their privacy and control over their online presence. Data privacy is the protection of personal data from those who should not have access to it and the ability of individuals to determine who can access their person information.
Access control of both physical data, such as the server, and online, such as user access control are both important in maintaining data security. As the world becomes more connected online, the need to secure data has become part of every day life. The need for cyber security awareness is to help prevent a data breach.
Cyber security is a term that describes hardware, software and best practices that might be used to secure an IT environment. Data privacy focuses on ensuring a user's information is properly handled, while cyber security focuses on preventing security breaches. Cyber security starts with security by design.
Privacy by design means that organisations need to consider privacy at the initial design stages and throughout the complete development process of new products, processes or services that involve processing personal data.
Why is privacy protection crucial?
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Preventing Identity Theft: When personal data falls into the wrong hands, it can be used to open fraudulent accounts, make unauthorised purchases, or impersonate you.
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Avoiding Targeted Scams: The more data criminals have about you, the more tailored and convincing their phishing attempts can become. This has been the starting point for many recent cyber attacks, such as M&S and the Co-op.
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Maintaining Control: You should have the power to decide what information about you is public and what remains private.
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Preventing Discrimination: Sensitive personal data, if exposed, could potentially be used for discriminatory purposes.
How to protect your privacy:
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Be Mindful of What You Share: Think twice before posting sensitive details on social media, even seemingly innocuous ones like your pet's name (often used as a security question answer). Be mindful about what you share about other people, for example if you are a school or college posting about staff and students.
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Review Privacy Settings: Regularly check and adjust the privacy settings on all your social media accounts, apps, and online services. Limit data sharing and ad tracking where possible.
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Read Privacy Policies (at least skim!): Understand what data a company collects and how they use it before agreeing to terms and conditions.
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Use Strong, Unique Passwords and MFA: These are your primary gates to protect private accounts.
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Be Wary of Permissions: When downloading new apps, review the permissions they request. Does a flashlight app really need access to your contacts and location?
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Consider Incognito/Private Browse: For casual Browse, these modes can prevent websites from tracking your activity across sessions, though they don't hide your IP address.
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Data Minimisation: Only provide the absolute minimum information required when signing up for services.
Your data has value – treat it with the care it deserves to prevent misuse and maintain your digital autonomy.
💡Today's Cyber Tip: Review Your Social Media Privacy Settings!
Today, spend 10-15 minutes reviewing the privacy settings on your most-used social media platform. Adjust them to limit what personal information is visible to the public and third-party apps.
If you post to your organisation's page, check your admin accounts and who has access.
Customers might want to review our Social Media & Marketing Best Practice Library.
Watch our free video about 'Protecting your Data with Access Control':
DPE Knowledge Bank Guidance and Support:
For schools and colleges, six of the DfE Digital Standards are now mandatory. We have a DfE Digital Standards Tracker tool help you track your cyber resilience and your progress:
Review our Cyber Security Best Practice Area for micro learning, support, guidance and policies:
Why not have a look at our 'specialist' trainer Harry the Hacker :
