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Building a positive corporate image is one of the top priorities in any company’s communication strategy. Achieving this goal requires efforts on multiple fronts, from social media and press communication to corporate social responsibility initiatives.
In this landscape, it's easy to overlook the crucial importance of complying with GDPR and safeguarding customer data privacy.
A positive corporate image means that consumers not only purchase your products or services but also trust your business with their money and personal data.
On the other hand, poor data management leading to GDPR violations can severely damage this trust, making it difficult to recover.
The reality is that a single mistake in this area can have extremely negative consequences for a company’s reputation, exposing the business as negligent in its data protection practices.
At icaria Technology, we review the obligations companies face regarding GDPR compliance, the potential risks of non-compliance, and the tools available to prevent any threats to your company’s image in this regard.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced a series of obligations for companies regarding data management.
In general, this regulation mandates that companies implement the necessary technical and organizational measures to ensure the security of the data they collect, including the use of real personal data in pre-production and testing environments.
As the value and volume of data accessed by companies increase, citizens and public institutions demand that all organizations be capable of protecting this data against threats like hacking and security breaches.
Thus, companies must find a balance between accessing reliable, complex, and coherent data and ensuring its privacy, in line with GDPR.
Data privacy risks include unauthorized access or malicious attacks by third parties through security breaches.
When these problems occur due to poor management, the regulation also provides avenues for companies to be sued and fined for non-compliance. In fact, PurpleSec estimates that the average cost of a data breach for small companies ranges from $120,000 to $1.24 million.
The impact on corporate image goes beyond fines and economic costs related to the attack, as it means losing the trust of customers—one of the key intangible values for a company’s prosperity.
Perhaps the most famous example is Yahoo. In 2016, what was then positioned as one of the leading email providers and search engines suffered one of the most significant data breaches in history. With 500 million user accounts compromised, the company faced swift and severe consequences. Among these were significant economic and legal impacts, including massive stock losses and canceled merger agreements with Verizon. The shock to the company’s image was immediate, further compounding the damage.
Recovering from a cyberattack and regaining customer trust can take years and incur extraordinary costs. However, companies can take proactive steps to reduce or minimize the risk of a cyberattack that could jeopardize their corporate image.
Taking proactive measures is one of the critical strategic decisions for a company in the medium to long term, especially considering that the number of cyberattacks increases every year.
Fortunately, there are various tools designed to help companies manage private data securely and in compliance with GDPR. These include:
A tool designed to help companies comply with the "right to be forgotten," also known as the right of erasure. This right, enshrined in GDPR, requires companies to manage their databases responsibly to ensure citizen privacy. It restricts access to and deletes personal data at the end of a contractual relationship. It also allows citizens to have their personal data erased from any data records or storage systems.
Through the icaria GDPR software, companies can manage data responsibly in an automated manner. Additionally, in the event of an attack or data breach, the software minimizes the impact so that only the data of current or recent customers is affected.
Software designed to meet the need for data anonymization in testing environments. icaria TDM ensures that real people’s data is not directly transferred to testing databases, POCs, pilot projects, training environments, etc. Instead, it performs data anonymization processes. As a result, companies can use coherent and high-quality data in their software testing, while also preventing developers or testers from misusing it and protecting it from all kinds of security breaches.
Want to Learn More About Protecting Your Corporate Image From Data Breaches? At icaria Technology, we can help. Check out our GDPR resources or contact our team to discuss the measures you can take to safeguard data privacy in your business.
