5 Essential Steps for Creating Data Protection by Design
The legal standards and consumer knowledge of data security are ever-growing. People want to know more about what you're doing with their data and how it's managed. And governing bodies are becoming stricter about the way in which you must handle data.
Privacy by design is a legal requirement of the EU General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018. It is part of implementing the necessary measures to protect personal data. This means considering data protection at the forefront of everything you do.
Here are some of the requirements that your system should be able to meet:
Data protection as a core design principle
You should consider the security of data throughout the design and implementation process. Everything you do that involves personal data should have security at the forefront.
Ask yourself the following questions when designing a feature:
Does it give users access to only the data that they should have?
Can it easily be turned off or disabled in the event of a vulnerability being discovered?
Does this feature impact the security of any other parts of the system?
In what ways could the security be broken, and how do we test for them?
Having this mindset from the outset will help you build your system on a secure foundation. Upgrading or fixing security on an already-built system can be a time and money-intensive pursuit. So it’s best to make sure you get things done properly from the start.
Mitigating Risks and privacy-intrusion events
Your system should be able to hold up to the latest security threats. To assess this, you will need to hire a third-party penetration testing company.
These companies will simulate a cyber-attack on your software with the aim of finding weak points. You will receive a report containing all the vulnerabilities and their threat level. From this, you can make sure your system is as secure as possible.
When working with external developers, they will sometimes offer this as part of their service. But it’s best practice to get a different company on the case so that you have a fresh set of eyes.
Limit the collection of personal data to the absolute minimum;
The days of companies hoovering up all the data that they can are fortunately coming to an end. You should ensure that you only collect the data you need to fulfil the task at hand.
This will limit the extent of the issue if a security issue arises. For example, imagine you only needed anonymous salary data but also collected employee names and locations. You would have a much more serious issue at hand if all that information leaked versus just the salaries.
Protect personal data by default
It is vital that your system secures data without any need for input from your data subjects.
Nowadays, the user will expect you to protect their data as standard. They shouldn't have to go into hidden sub-menus or make requests to you to make sure everything is secure. Default settings should maximise privacy.
Hold third parties to the same standards
Be careful which third-party data processors you choose to work with. You should select them on the basis of their understanding of data protection standards. They also need to have the ability to implement said standards.
The best security policies in the world could be undone if a third party is a weak link in the chain. These requirements are the responsibility of the data controller. You need to ensure that the processor has been diligent in designing and implementing systems that meet the appropriate standards. The latest legislation extends the concept of data protection to organisations that develop and design applications. Yet the responsibility for compliance still rests with the data controller.
PayReview puts data protection at the heart of everything we. Amite builds all HR software systems from the ground up, with privacy for data subjects at the forefront.
Here are some of the measures we use in our HR software solutions:
Two-factor authentication
Pseudonymisation
Encryption-at-rest