Privacy 101- How to Protect A House of Data

Friday, November 2, 2007 - By: Darity Wesley

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

- Abraham Lincoln

Information is the life blood circulating through every successful business. The structure through which that information flows could be looked at as a ‘house of data’. If there are any weak parts to this house, it could be blown over like a house of cards.

Like every viable house, the house of data has a front door with curb appeal, a secure back door, a roof that doesn’t leak and a solid foundation. The front door provides access to information; how the user gets to the data they need and the portal through which information is gathered. The back door represents the distribution of data; how it gets to where it needs to go. These doors are both key components in the technology side of the protection of information. The roof and the floor represent the data and information security legal compliance elements that keep the house water tight and sitting on solid ground through intellectual property perfection, contracts, policies and procedures.

There are several strict guidelines by which intellectual property rights, data contracts, policies and procedures are created. Any business that takes these guidelines and implements them as processes, practices and procedures erects a shield of protection from possible public relations disasters and gives itself a sword for enforcement of its rights– both of which are critical to a continuation of any business as well as ensuring trust of consumers.

The first thing to understand is Fair Information Practice Principles. These are widely accepted and are the basis for many privacy and information security laws in the United States, Canada, Europe and other parts of the world. There are five core principles to keep in mind:

· Notice

· Choice

· Security Integrity & Accuracy

· Access

· Enforcement/Redress

Next is intellectual property, commonly known as IP, and refers collectively to the legal entitlements granted to commercially valuable products of the human intellect:

· Inventions (protected by patents)

· Literary and artistic works (protected by copyright, trade secret and trademark law)

· Trade secrets (protected by trade secret law)

· Product packaging design (protected by trademark and trade dress law)

· Public personae (protected by right of publicity).

IP is what protects your information in the form of a copyright or in the form of trade secrets. Copyright is a form of protection provided to authors of “original works of authorship”. Facts, however, cannot be copyrighted. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works and generally gives the owner the right to reproduce the work, create derivative works, distribute copies, perform it publicly or to display it publicly. It is provided automatically to the author of any original work covered by the law as soon as it is created. Even though you do not have to formally register the work for it to be protected, it makes your statement of rights more visible and is good for database protection if it is needed for enforcement. The simple “© Year, Your Name. All rights reserved.” covers it. Such as “© 2006 Privacy Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.”

The tricky part of working with IP issues is that the company or person owning a database must find the right balance between protecting the content and creating rules that hamper an ability to conduct business. It is the up to the owner of any database or compilation of data to obtain the intellectual property rights from its suppliers to properly protect the content.

What’s the bottom line here? Your bottom line is at stake! Failure to establish proper legal parameters for data use, legal protection of the content of the database and extensive lT and employment data security policies and procedures creates a house with no security framework, roof or foundation for your organization.

With all of the new technology tools available, it is clear that the businesses which have the most well managed and protected data are, or will be, the most successful. Make sure your house of data is custom and built to last.

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