By Crystal Woody, Sr. Director of Communications at Privitar

It’s Data Privacy Week, and Privitar is ready to celebrate! Read on to learn more about the origins of Data Privacy Week, why it’s important, and how Privitar is celebrating.

What is Data Privacy Week?

Data Privacy Week is an international effort to empower individuals and businesses to respect privacy, safeguard data, and enable trust. 

Data Privacy Week actually began in 2008 as Data Privacy Day, and was observed annually on January 28th in the United States and Canada as an extension of the Data Protection Day celebration in Europe. Data Protection Day commemorates the Jan. 28, 1981, signing of Convention 108, the first legally binding international treaty dealing with privacy and data protection. 

This year, the effort was expanded to a full week-long initiative focused on raising awareness about online privacy, educating citizens on how to manage their personal information and keep it secure, and encouraging businesses to respect data and be transparent about how they collect and use customer data.

The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCA) officially leads the Data Privacy Week campaign and is advised by a distinguished advisory committee of privacy professionals to help the campaign align with the most current privacy issues in a thoughtful and meaningful way.

Why is Data Privacy Week Important? 

As the NCA notes: “Millions of people are unaware of and uninformed about how their personal information is being used, collected or shared in our digital society. Data Privacy Week aims to inspire dialogue and empower individuals and companies to take action.” 

Having an open dialog about data privacy is critically important in today’s rapidly expanding global digital economy. On the business front, organizations have access to ever- increasing amounts of data, much of which is sensitive data. If managed well, that data can be used to derive insights and drive innovation for their organizations. But they also must do the right thing, and be able to demonstrate how they are protecting data and respecting privacy.

Increasingly, people are waking up to the realization that data protection needs to be intrinsic to systems and consistently applied at all points of consumption. When data privacy is embedded across an organization, it can make data available faster, to a much wider audience than ever before, including the people who need it most: the analysts and data scientists on the front lines. 

By embracing data privacy, organizations can ensure that safe data is at the heart of their business operations—and at the same time, they can also earn the trust and respect of their customers for being good stewards of sensitive data and operating ethically. 

How is Privitar Celebrating Data Privacy Week? 

We believe that getting data privacy right is an ongoing journey and that you need the right tools in your toolkit. We’ve created a special Data Privacy Week Resource Hub to help provide you with tools that you can use in your privacy journey. Each day this week, we’ll add new assets—videos, webinars, podcasts, checklists, guides, and other great resources! We hope you’ll check out the Hub each day, and join in the conversation on Twitter and LinkedIn using #DataPrivacyWeek & #PrivacyAware.

Check out the Data Privacy Week Resource Hub 

Data Privacy Data Privacy Week