VENZA and CyberTek Announce Commitment to Respecting Data by Becoming 2022 Data Privacy Week Champions

This year’s initiative emphasizes educating businesses on data collection practices that respect data privacy and promoting transparency

VENZA and CyberTek today announced their commitment to Data Privacy Week by registering as a Champions. As a Champions, VENZA and CyberTek recognize and support the principle that all organizations share the responsibility of being conscientious stewards of personal information.

Data Privacy Week is an expanded effort from Data Privacy Day — taking place annually from January 24 – 28 — that generates awareness about the importance of privacy, highlights easy ways to protect personal information, and reminds organizations that respecting privacy is good for business. This year, we are encouraging individuals to learn more about how to manage and protect their valuable online data. We are also encouraging businesses to respect customer data and learn about their responsibility to keep individuals’ personal information safe from unauthorized access and ensure fair, relevant, and legitimate data collection and processing.

“The internet of things brings us all closer together and helps us maintain our relationships with family and friends around the world, but it means that we have to be mindful of where our personally identifiable information is stored,” said David Christiansen, CIO of VENZA. “Just as VENZA advises hoteliers and their staff on data protection and privacy, we also inform our employees about how to manage their own data. With over eleven years of experience in data protection and privacy compliance for the hospitality industry, Data Privacy Day is every day at VENZA.”

According to a Pew Research Center study, 79% of U.S. adults report being concerned about the way their data is used by companies. As technology evolves and the COVID-19 pandemic continues to influence how consumers interact with businesses online, data collection practices are becoming increasingly unavoidable, making it imperative that companies be open and honest about how they collect, use, and share consumers’ personal information and communicate their policies clearly and concisely.

The National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) has offered the following tips to help guide individuals and businesses to better data privacy practices.

For Individuals:

Understand the privacy/convenience tradeoff: Many accounts ask for access to personal information, such as your geographic location, contacts list, and photo album, before you even use their services. This personal information has tremendous value to businesses and allows some to even offer you their services at little to no cost. Make informed decisions about whether or not to share your data with certain businesses by considering the amount of personal information they are asking for and weighing it against the benefits you may receive in return. Be thoughtful about who gets that information and wary of apps or services that require access to information that is not required or relevant to the services they offer. Delete unused apps on your internet-connected devices and keep others secure by performing updates.

Manage your privacy: Check the privacy and security settings on web services and apps and set them to your comfort level for information sharing. Get started with NCA’s Manage Your Privacy Settings page to check the settings of social media accounts, retail stores, apps and more.

Protect your data: Data privacy and data security go hand in hand. Keep your data secure by creating strong, unique passwords and storing them in a password manager.Add another layer of security by enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever possible, especially on accounts with sensitive information. MFA has been found to block 99.9% of automated attacks.

For Businesses:

Conduct an assessment: Assess your data collection practices. Whether you operate locally, nationally, or globally, understand which privacy laws and regulations apply to your business. Follow reasonable security measures to keep individuals’ personal information safe from inappropriate and unauthorized access, and make sure the personal data you collect is processed in a fair manner and only collected for relevant and legitimate purposes.

Don’t forget to maintain oversight of partners and vendors as well. If someone provides services on your behalf, you are also responsible for how they collect and use your customer’s personal information.

Adopt a privacy framework: Researching and adopting a privacy framework can help you manage risk and create a culture of privacy in your organization by building privacy into the fabric of your business. Get started by checking out the following frameworks: NIST Privacy Framework, AICPA Privacy Management Framework, ISO/IEC 27701 – International Standard for Privacy Information Management

Educate employees: Create a culture of privacy in your organization by educating your employees about their obligations to protect personal information. Educate employees on your company’s privacy policy and their role in your privacy culture during the onboarding process. Engage staff by asking them to consider how privacy and data security applies to their day-to-day work. Teach employees how to update their privacy and security settings on work and personal accounts. Learn more.

For more information about Data Privacy Week 2022 and how to get involved, visit https://staysafeonline.org/data-privacy-week/.