Data Protection Best Practices in 2025

(How to build a successful Data Protection strategy)

Written by Miriam Eyonomue

In the new technological age, information is currency. Every like, post, search, and shopping cart has imprinted our digital essence onto the interweb, forming rudimentary inferences about us. Corporate power players leverage data-driven insights to influence and control their products in the competitive market. “Data is the new oil” isn’t just another witty catchphrase; it encapsulates how the digital economy has made information the most fragile yet coveted asset for any entity with an upward growth trajectory.

Amid the tussle for this lucrative resource, it’s easy to detach data from its actual owners. What was once personal becomes digits and figures to launch the next intuitive service while its human impact fades into the background. The result of mishandling or mismanaging this day could be detrimental to real-life people. Institutions have acknowledged the dual nature of big data: its potential as a tool for innovation and its potential as a catalyst for mass manipulation.

Without data protection:

Your privacy disappears. Knowledge is power, and in a world driven by digital advancement, that knowledge is derived from information about you, a result of the right strategic permutation of your digital footprint scattered all over the worldwide web. Take the case of Thelma Arnold in 2006. She was the average everyday internet user, with curiosity about her friend’s ailments and love for her pets. But when the internet company, AOL, released a large excerpt from its search query logs intended for research to the public, all of Thelma’s private and embarrassing clicks were laid bare, and like moths to a flame, the digital trail led right to her doorstep, an event signifying that even so-called “anonymized” data cannot protect us from the most dedicated and organized cyberattacks. Although they removed the data and apologized, the scandal illustrates that data is more than computational digits and codes—it’s fragments of personal information that tell our stories. In the wrong hands, it could be dangerous. We establish privacy based on digital dignity; data protection fosters this, and without it, our personal information can be freely accessed by others.
You lose control. Think of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the mid-2010s. Netizens were routinely socializing on the internet, unbeknownst to them that their data was being harvested for nefarious purposes. An army of algorithms soon segmented and launched targeted advertisements to socially engineer a certain voting pattern. Victims of this mass psychological manipulation believed that the platform was becoming more intuitive. Meanwhile, they were being puppeteered in another person’s large-scale plans. Incidents of this nature demonstrate the importance of data protection. Without it, you lose control. You stop being the author in your narrative. Instead, predictive algorithms shape your choices and influence your behaviors. You lose sight of which choices are automatically yours or the result of a carefully crafted digital script.
Trust breaks down, and innovation suffers. Stakeholders fear overregulation will stifle innovation; we’ve seen this recurrent criticism of the EU’s regulatory actions. Conversely, underregulation creates vulnerabilities, leading to technological stagnation instead of advancement. Data analysis facilitates the creation and improvement of successful new systems and solutions. Without checks and balances, people become wary, and R&D loses the trust it needs to develop futuristic discoveries. Data protection creates digital trust, one that screams respect for human dignity and proactively elicits accountability and transparency.

We’ve built a digital economy that trades in information. Data protection ensures we can leverage the most advanced technologies without surrendering ourselves to them. Without stringent oversight, data protection devolves into a tool for mass exploitation and manipulation, quickly leading to a dystopian reality.

Know what data you collect.

The Marriott International data breach of 2018 was one of the most infamous security incidents of the decade, dwarfing many other incidents because of the sheer scale of stolen data. What was surprising is that it could have been prevented because one reason it happened was the company’s choice to keep old guest records from Starwood Hotels without clear rules for deleting them, which greatly increased the amount of information at risk and serves as a lasting warning about the importance of collecting only necessary data.

The downfall of most businesses is that in the search for “insights” to support product improvement, they become digital dragons hoarding data piles. Understand that data are like eggs; the more you carry, the harder it is to balance and protect them. Organizations collect too much data that they end up not using; hence, it just sits there accumulating risk like dust on a bookshelf.

The solution? Know what data you collect. Identify the purposes of your data processing and specify the exact data you need to collect to achieve those purposes, no more and no less. Conduct periodic audits to ensure your data collection has not fallen outside its initial scope. Data minimization isn’t just a rulebook formality but helps reduce the blast radius of breaches. More data translates into more impact—the loss reverberates, and you have to answer to data subjects and authorities on why you possessed the data. Putting this principle into practice is an anchor for an efficient cybersecurity program.

The most important data is probably the one you don’t collect at all. When you don’t have it, you can’t lose it.

Implement strong security practices.

Strong security practices are the linchpin to an overall data protection framework. It’s not enough to create and sign off on policies; follow it up by erecting a tangible digital fortress. If you’re not protecting data actively, you might as well gift-wrap it for malicious threat actors to steal. Some popular ways to do this are

· Ensure the implementation of access control measures.

It is important to ensure that not everyone has access to sensitive information. Having an open door to confidential data is a breach disaster waiting to happen. Not only will you struggle with visibility, but you also compound the scale of investigation to perform when a breach happens. Access control is a useful way to narrow the attack surface and keep track of who has access to your data. Set role-based permissions instead of blanket admin rights. If your data stores are a restaurant, permit only chefs in the kitchen area. Allow minimal access and only when necessary. Even the most senior security staff need not always be privy to confidential data except when circumstances warrant it. Monitor all access grants. Insider threats are still a thing, and monitoring helps you differentiate between legitimate and aberrant activity.

Leverage encryption.

Think of the confidential data as a diary; it’s not immune to trespass. But you want its contents to be indecipherable should it fall to prying eyes. This is where encryption comes in. Encryption functions as an invisible ink, transforming data into mathematical nonsense both during rest and transit, unless a decryption key is possessed. It serves as a security measure to protect against breaches, which cannot be entirely prevented, ensuring that if a breach occurs, the data remains useless to unauthorized users.

· Regularly update and patch systems.

Outdated systems are like unmanned back doors, and like any unprotected back door in a home that invites burglars, they create vulnerabilities that entice threat actors. Leave no back doors in your system by regularly conducting updates to improve its security posture. Some organizations hire ethical hackers or create “red teams” to simulate cyber-attacks and test the integrity of their technical data protection and security measures. It illuminates prevalent breach patterns and the tactics of malicious actors, enabling you to prepare your systems ahead of time.

· Secure third-party integrations

In 2013, Target suffered a data breach that cost them punitive damages and made it one of the largest data breach settlements in history. Target’s systems remained intact, their compliance was impeccable, and their infrastructure was maintaining its integrity. However, their vulnerability was a smaller-scale, less secure vendor, Fazzio, who provided them with remote billing and project management support. Once successfully compromised, the attackers could move undetected through Target’s corporate system and siphon tons of data. 0Where an organization has a formidable security system, the weak links are usually partners, vendors, third parties, or distributors. If you remove a less secure link, the entire system collapses. Hence, watch the company you keep and vet your vendors. Audit and regularly review their compliance stance. How reliable and updated are their security systems? How do they treat data protection? Has a breach occurred before? How often do they have breaches? How was it handled? Adopt a zero trust model, too. Even when they seem dependable, limit access to only what’s necessary. Don’t give unnecessary access; issue only what’s needed.

Have a breach response plan.

In 2017, Equifax sustained a breach that affected over 44% of the US population. The media storm that followed was less about the attack and more about their response. Instead of a well-executed crisis script, it was a messy mix of silence, erroneous PR information, insider trading, and profiting off the relief mechanism. Uber didn’t have it any better; when their data vaults were cracked in 2016, instead of fulfilling its reporting obligations, it surrendered to blackmail and kept the event hush-hush. The result was a pink slip and an orange jumpsuit for its CSO.

Personal data breaches are inevitable as attackers are evolving in unforeseen ways. What matters is how you handle them. Don’t wait for it to happen. Prepare and simulate a response proactively.

Establish a team of experienced incident responders, including security leads, legal teams, communications strategists, and management executives, who are actively involved and have clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Outline a clear breach response policy with a step-by-step process on containment, repair, and recovery. Let it be as effective in execution as it is on paper: feasible, practical, and quick. Simulate it, if possible; practice makes perfect, as the saying goes.

Tick all the legally obligatory boxes. Have the regulators and data subjects, if need be, on speed dial for when a high-risk impact breach occurs. Some jurisdictions stipulate a time frame; others leave it to the controllers to intuitively measure what counts as reasonable time.

And learn from your mistakes. After fighting the battle outside, retreat to your war room and recap. Find out what went wrong: the actions and inactions that facilitated the breach. Conduct investigations. Conduct audits. Make reports that offer valuable insights and learning for future use.

What’s worse than a breach is not learning from it. Transform your view of a data breach incident from a negative impact on your organization’s reputation to a chance to demonstrate its resilience. Data breaches are bound to occur. Therefore, a breach response plan either reassures your stakeholders or exacerbates your liability. Without a breach response plan, your organization risks the same fate as a sailor without a lifeboat.

Train your staff.

As attackers adapt to advanced technologies that restrict access to systems, they are increasingly focusing on the most unpredictable element: the human mind. An organization’s biggest asset is its people, and they can either be a living firewall or a catalyst for a breach disaster. You could possess Fort Knox levels of digital security, but if Femi from accounting ignorantly clicks that phishing mail in his inbox or Temi from sales has her password as “Password123,” your defense system will crumble faster than a set of wobbly dominoes.

Invest in your staff as much as you do in your infrastructure.

Conduct regular awareness trainings. A well-trained team serves as a formidable defense. Armed with the right knowledge and exposure, they imbibe clean data practices and cyber hygiene, can identify suspicious activity, spot potential breaches, and fortify their credentials against compromise. Ensure these trainings are frequent. Don’t leave it as an item on the orientation checklist. Please incorporate it into your regular activities. Conduct them as you would conduct quarterly KPIs. That way, they stand as occasional refreshers. Furthermore, make them interactive; people tune out boring slideshows.

Simulate away. Training shouldn’t just be theoretical but practical and make a learning exercise out of it. Experience is the best teacher, they say. Mimic data breaches to see how each staff member and core team responds. Stage phishing drills and see who clicked first. Rinse and repeat to fine-tune the process. With each practice, you get closer to near-perfect precision and speed in breach countermeasures.

Tailor training programs. Each individual possesses unique roles and responsibilities, making a universal training program inapplicable. Customize awareness for each team. For the IT department, emphasize the importance of secure coding practices. Regarding employee data, HR should provide privacy compliance training. For compliance, teach the credence of robust privacy and protection strategies. Highlight practicable breach policies for legal purposes. For effective communication, provide a detailed list of best practices for managing breach crises professionally. It’s not enough for people to know their roles in sustaining a sturdy data protection framework. They need to execute those roles diligently.

Create clear data protection and privacy policies and security policies. This document will serve not only as an onboarding guide, but also as a constant source of study and reference. Hint at your data collection, processing, storage, and deletion protocols, and incorporate ethics while at it. Outline rules on password requirements, device use and access, storage, etc. Make it simple and feasible, and update it if need be. Also provide security policies; rules on password requirements, device use and access, storage, etc.

Lastly, cultivate a privacy-first company culture. Security is a shared responsibility, not solely an IT concern. Prioritize privacy by design principles in product development, celebrate privacy milestones like you celebrate product launches and performance metrics, create resources for people to learn about privacy, invest in your teams for data privacy compliance, etc. A strong data protection strategy shows your organization’s discipline and business readiness to outsiders.

Conclusion

The emergence of big data has transformed information into a source of power and control. While it is tempting to view it as a tradable and shareable commodity, it’s important to keep sight of the human factors involved. It may be resourceful to drive KPIs, but ultimately, they’re the personal details attached to a real-life individual. The search for advancement should not come at the cost of rights and freedoms. Hence, the emergence of data protection seeks to balance innovation and safeguarding of people’s personal dignity. Having reliable data protection practices projects an organization as being principled while being forward-thinking.

A firm data protection stance puts you ahead of the competitive game. It depicts a culture of discipline, ethics, and responsibility, and this is a concrete foundation for brand success. While your competitors are dealing with a security incident, your organization will benefit from investor confidence and consumer trust.