Privacy concerns how laws and norms govern personal data, shaping cybersecurity duties for collection, storage, access, and disclosure.
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Background for this topic.
Privacy is the ability of people to control how information about them is collected, used, retained, and disclosed. In technical and legal contexts, it covers identifiable data and data that can support inferences about a person, not only information made public. Privacy rules and organizational policies commonly address purpose, transparency, access, correction, retention, and sharing.
For security practitioners, privacy depends on reducing unnecessary data and restricting legitimate access: data minimization, encryption, least-privilege controls, segregation of identifiers, retention limits, and audit logs all reduce exposure. Compromised credentials, misconfigured storage, excessive telemetry, or third-party access can reveal sensitive information; pseudonymized datasets may also be re-identified when combined with other data. During an incident, teams must establish what personal data was accessed or disclosed, contain further exposure, preserve evidence, and meet applicable notification and handling requirements.
The use on online tracking tools on the health-related websites and apps of HIPAA and non-HIPAA regulated entities continues to be a lightning rod due to a long list of ongoing data privacy, regulatory and legal concerns, said partner and attorney Elizabeth Hodge of the law firm Akerman.
Voluntary Effort Calls for Standards, Empowering Patients, But What About Privacy?The Trump administration launched an initiative to improve patient data interoperability, exchange and accessibility throughout the healthcare ecosystem. The effort asks tech firms, healthcare providers and insurers to voluntarily comply with standards and data sharing criteria. Sounds like déjà vu?
Banks Must Secure APIs, Vet Partners and Prepare for Open Finance Threats in 2025Open finance is revolutionizing banking, but it's also expanding the attack surface. Discover the critical API, data privacy and third-party risks facing financial institutions in 2025 - and how to build a secure future.
A new infostealing malware making the rounds can exfiltrate credentials and other system data even from browsing software considered more privacy-focused than mainstream options.