Spoiler alert: a lot has changed in the past year and a half. The ways we shop, eat, celebrate, educate, and travel will be forever changed after March of 2020. Perhaps the most widely experienced change has been the shift from office-based to home-based employee work. Remote work setup has raised concerns about data privacy now that company data security is in the hands of everyday employees. Keeping up with the data privacy trends in 2021 strengthens your virtual private networks (VPNs) and safeguards your business.

Let’s face it, a vast majority of home-based workers either do not employ safe data-sharing practices or are not aware of them. This leaves any company vulnerable to data leaks and cyber-attacks. To keep your business data safe, you must comply with the new normal trends and regulations that cover privacy. Here are the data trends that you should watch out for this year.

1. Global Data Privacy Regulation Trends

The introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018 began a whole new era of data protection and privacy. This affected more than 60 jurisdictions worldwide. This is not merely a trend that businesses and organizations ought to keep up with and understand. Companies must comply with this regulation. Failure to do so could entail steep penalties for companies and compensation for data subjects.

One of the repercussions of the GDPR is the decrease in the amount of data that businesses can store. Organizations must also delete customer personal information when it’s no longer needed. In addition to this, companies need clear consent from the data subjects before they can process and store their information. Data storage must become more efficient, protected, and managed than ever before.

To demonstrate GDPR compliance, companies and organizations must:

• delegate data protection responsibilities to their staff
• maintain proper documentation of the data collected and used
• train your employees in implementing security measures
• have established contracts with third parties that process data for them

2. Data Privacy Transparency Trends

As more and more data breaches occur, a top data privacy trend in 2021 is the consumers’ demand for data privacy transparency. Customers now have increased awareness of their rights and the cost of their data. Companies that fail to address these concerns find themselves losing customers to competitors who create a safer environment for sharing personal information.

Online shopping has been steadily rising for years. The pandemic has brought online marketplace activity to all-time highs. There are now more people who use the web for purchase than ever. Because of this, we advise businesses to establish and maintain digital trust with their customers. Data privacy trends in 2021 show that secure data policies, data-sharing practices, and privacy-enhancing technologies are now vital to the health and growth of a company.

3. Third-Party Risk Management Trends

Another trend brought about by the GDPR is the heightened focus on third-party risk management and risk assessment. This means that businesses must be more careful in choosing the third parties that they work with to prevent personal data breaches. You must now follow more rules when it comes to sharing consumers’ personal information with third parties. This is also true in how the latter can use or sell the information. One of these rules is having Data Processing Agreement contracts in place for third-party companies you hire to process your data.

More organizations are foreseen to incorporate privacy frameworks to prevent potential data risks and comply with data regulations. Leveraging companies that provide managed network security helps strengthen your business’s privacy program and achieve compliance with the GDPR.

Moving Forward with Data Privacy Trends 2021

Ensuring the data privacy of consumers and complying with the GDPR helps solidify your consumers’ trust in your business. It is also important to keep abreast with data privacy trends in 2021 to better address your customers’ concerns and retain loyalty. Remember, companies that fail to provide consumers with the safety they demand could end up with dwindling customers and profits. You can protect your company from data risks by investing in privacy technologies, managed IT services, and data security.