Personal Data Protection

Personal data is a source of information about an identifiable person who can be identified with reference to his physical, mental, psychological, economic, social or cultural state. This data is further classified as private personal data and sensitive personal data and requires personal data protection.

Any data which reveals facts about the family, an application to a social cause, mental or physical sufferings of a person, any bound transaction etc comes under the category of private personalized data. The data which reveals certain kinds of public opinion on health, ethnic origin, genetic information etc in the line of politics, psychology or religion is a sensitive personal data.

Any one who uses a computer, uses it at the risk of losing data. This loss of personal information could at times be unaccountable.

A program that could spy on your data, along with an anti-virus software, could help to protect the personal information. Protecting personal data includes learning to avoid scams and other similar type of email swindlers. Protecting data also involves individual participation. For example, you can always make it a point, not to click on a link unknowingly. Remember to never submit your personal information in an e-mail which asks for it. This is the common sense side of personal data protection.

There is a personal data protection act that protects the fundamental rights of an individuals personal data from being processed. The act was passed in February 2003 and it came in to force in October 2003.

The personal data protection act provides the following provisions:

  1. The terms and conditions for processing the personal data.
  2. Procedures for the state to supervise over this personal data.
  3. Liabilities for violation of the terms and conditions and much more.

However, though there are many rules and regulations laid down for securing personal data, most computers are constantly subjected to failures or accidents either knowingly or unknowingly. Good and continuous backup procedures along with the recovery solutions are vital to protect the systems that cannot withstand a single minute loss in the information system.

Another problem that greatly affects the computer systems are the virus attacks. Ideally, a business system should have computer systems that are not connected to each other through a network. But in most large organizations, this is not possible because transactions occur from one computer to another. Most of the times, computers are located at different places, cities or even across the country. Because of this, network connection is a must. But a positive step to be done is to make use of renowned anti-software packages on the systems that constantly watches and safeguards against these malicious virus attacks.

It is always advisable to keep the hard disk clean from time to time by deleting the unwanted files from the folders and keeping only the required ones. Defragging your system will also prolong the life of your system.

Securing personal data is a vital issue for the smooth operations of any organization. If good data security measures are taken up by the organization then there is always a good chance for recovery solutions to be effective.