As an owner of a business you must deal with the personal information of both your staff and customers. By law, you are obliged to safeguard this data and ensure that it is used correctly. It’s not always clear what constitutes personal data.

It is important to know that the definition of personal information varies depending on the legal jurisdiction and country of origin. In general, it refers to any information that identifies an individual. This includes information like the email address of a person or telephone number, but it also includes any other data that can be linked to an person, thereby making them identifiable. For instance the date of birth, their mother’s maiden names biometric data, information about passports and visas or credit card numbers, and other sensitive data regarding employment (e.g. Performance ratings and disciplinary records).

The information should be easily identifiable by others. If it is very difficult for someone else to recognize the information, then it is not considered personal. This is the “practicability test”.

The final step in determining whether something is personal is whether it is about an actual person. This is not the case for business information like invoices or orders.

If sensitive personal learn the facts here now data is lost or stolen, or if it is disclosed in any other manner without authorization, it could be very harmful. It is vital to educate employees on the importance of safeguarding sensitive PII. It is also important to take steps to protect the information when it is not in use such as by locking off computers unsupervised and destruction of documents on paper. It is crucial to regularly review the PII in your system and restrict access to those with a business reason to do so.