Information protection helps ensure that individuals’ personal data stays private and out of reach from malicious parties like hackers. It’s a fundamental right that is legally protected in dozens of countries. Protecting personal data privacy benefits the economy by letting customers feel secure with their credit card details and home addresses. This confidence motivates them shop online, sign up for more informational services, and engage with companies.
Information security refers to the system of procedures and practices that are designed to guard information from unauthorized access, modification, or loss, in transmission or storage. It covers both technical and operational aspects, ranging from system architecture to information governance and security audits.
For instance, password-protected files protect against disclosure by unauthorized parties of sensitive information. Encryption, which scrambles data, so that even if it ends up in wrong hands, they won’t obtain any value without the proper decryption key, also helps to maintain confidentiality. It’s also important to identify any devices that contain sensitive information, such as cabinets for files, employees’ mobile devices and flash drives.
Information protection is typically part of an organization’s overall information assurance program. Together, the aim is to balance the protection of information’s confidentiality, integrity and accessibility (known as the CIA trio) while allowing effective policy execution that doesn’t compromise the efficiency of look at here now the organization. MIT’s updated Written Information Security Program is based on this concept of classifying Institute research and administrative data in accordance with its risk.