Glossary of terms

Data Protection

Data protection refers to the practice of safeguarding personal information and ensuring the privacy of individuals by regulating the collection, use, storage, and dissemination of personal data. Here’s a more detailed explanation:

Definition

Data protection is a set of laws, regulations, and practices designed to protect individuals’ personal data from unauthorized access, misuse, or disclosure. It aims to strike a balance between individuals’ fundamental right to privacy and the legitimate needs of organizations to collect and process personal data for various purposes.

Main features of data protection

1. Fair and lawful processing: Personal data must be processed in a fair and lawful manner, with appropriate legal grounds and transparency.

2. Purpose limitation: Personal data must be collected for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes, and not further processed in a way incompatible with those purposes.

3. Data minimization: Only personal data that is adequate, relevant, and limited to what is necessary should be collected and processed.

4. Accuracy: Personal data must be accurate and kept up-to-date, with reasonable steps taken to ensure inaccurate data is corrected or deleted.

5. Storage limitation: Personal data should not be kept for longer than necessary for the purposes for which it was collected.

6. Integrity and confidentiality: Appropriate technical and organizational measures must be taken to protect personal data against unauthorized or unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction, or damage.

7. Individual rights: Data subjects (individuals whose data is processed) have certain rights, such as the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict processing, object to processing, and data portability.

8. Accountability: Data controllers (organizations that determine the purposes and means of data processing) are responsible for demonstrating compliance with data protection principles.

Scope of data protection

Data protection laws and regulations typically cover the processing of personal data, which is any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (data subject). This includes names, identification numbers, location data, online identifiers, and factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural, or social identity of an individual.

Data protection laws apply to both automated and manual processing of personal data, and they govern various sectors, including businesses, government agencies, healthcare organizations, educational institutions, and non-profit organizations. These laws aim to provide individuals with control over their personal data and hold organizations accountable for the proper handling and protection of that data.

Some notable data protection laws and regulations include the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the United States, and various other national and regional data protection frameworks worldwide.

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