It’s National Data Privacy Day: Get Involved!

January 28th is the national recognition of Data Privacy Day. In today’s digital world, we share more data than ever, and we may not even realize it. Data Privacy Day aims to help consumers and businesses alike get involved in their data privacy practices, and play an active role in protecting their information from malicious sources. Here’s what you need to know about getting involved this January:

What Is Data Privacy?

Data privacy is important at home, at work, and within your community. Data privacy is about respecting people’s privacy, safeguarding data, and fostering a feeling of trust between consumers and businesses. Privacy is more important than ever, as smart devices and digital assistants allow us to achieve more with less effort. It’s easy to get comfortable with your data security, but complacency could leave you vulnerable to attack.

Privacy at Home

Good data privacy habits start at home. Talk to your family about protecting your personal information and remaining safe online. Here are some tips to get started:

• Make unique passwords for every account and never share them
• Install good antivirus software on your computer
• Don’t enter credit card information or remember information on public computers
• Don’t send sensitive data (like social security numbers) via regular email
• Visit company logins by going directly to the website yourself rather than clicking on links through email

Talk to your kids about appropriate sharing, especially when it comes to social media. The more information you share online, the more likely it is that someone will get their hands on it. Don’t fill in your social media profiles completely – if someone needs your birth date, email, or address, let them get it from you directly. Set your social media profiles to private, so only your friends can access them.

Additionally, keeping all systems up-to-date with updates is a great way to mitigate cyber security threats and keep your data secure. Set your computer(s) to automatically update. Also, update all of your mobile devices, especially smartphones, with any pending updates, and turn on automatic updates for all apps as well.

Privacy at Work

Employers can help by creating a culture of data privacy in the workplace. Teach your employees about the importance of privacy and how it instills trust in your organization. Develop a cybersecurity seminar, and make sure that all team members understand their roles in keeping your business safe from malicious online activity.

Be honest about the kinds of information you collect on your customers and how you use it. Follow security measures and take steps to protect your customers’ personal information. Remember, data privacy is good for your business!

In the Community

Take steps this Data Privacy Day to engage and educate others in your community. Volunteer to lead a seminar in your local school, church, senior center, or recreational facility. Participate in community listservs and dispense handouts on the importance of data privacy to spread the word. Download free resources from staysafeonline.org.

When You Bank

CBC National Bank fully understands its responsibility to safeguard customers’ information.

We are absolutely committed to data privacy, and we take the following steps to ensure that all of our customers’ sensitive information is protected:

• All data is encrypted with 128-bit encryption, the strongest available, to safeguard your communications in transit. Encryption is accomplished through Secure Sockets Layers (SSL), which utilizes mathematical formulas to 'encrypt' or hide information from prying eyes on the internet. Additionally, if SSL detects that data was added or deleted after you sent it to the bank, the connection will be severed in order to guard against any tampering.
  
  
• CBC computers sit behind a firewall, a collection of hardware and software that verifies information and determines who is authorized to have access.
  
  
• Passwords are long and use a variety of characters, making them too complex to guess, (the chance of guessing a password is less than 1 in a billion) and after three failed attempts to login, the account will be blocked. Additionally, User IDs and passwords are isolated from the Internet by being stored on CBC National Bank computer. This way, the passwords and IDs can never be accessed or downloaded by anyone on the Internet.