A Report on the Importance of Protecting Sensitive Personal Data

This report explores the critical importance of protecting sensitive personal information, defining it as data that, if compromised, could lead to inconvenience, unfairness, embarrassment, or harm. It investigates the economic implications of data breaches, highlighting potential impacts on businesses and national security. The study also examines technological approaches to maximize data protection, such as cloud data protection, big data encryption, and data access governance. Methodologically, the report proposes using interviews and surveys to collect qualitative and quantitative data, which will be analyzed using descriptive and frequency statistics. The literature review covers data protection regulations like GDPR and the ethical considerations in handling sensitive information across various professional fields. Ultimately, the report aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of why safeguarding sensitive personal information is essential for individuals, organizations, and countries alike, emphasizing the need for robust security systems and adherence to data privacy laws. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments for students.

Sensitive personal information
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Abstract
Sensitive personal information is that information which if disclosed, lost or compromised would
result to a great inconveniency, unfairness to people or individuals, embarrassment and even
harm. This study therefore proposed to investigate the importance of protecting sensitive
personal information to answer the primary question i.e. what is the importance of protecting
sensitive personal information? In regards to that, this study will discuss the economic
importance of protecting sensitive personal information as well as technological approaches that
can be used to maximize the protection of sensitive personal information. The proposed
methodologies that will be used in the data collection are interviews and survey that will help in
collection of both qualitative and quantitative data. Thereafter, descriptive and frequency
statistics will be used in the analysis of the collected data.
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Key words
Information technology, Data protection, Personal information, sensitive personal information
and Information.
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Contents
Abstract......................................................................................................................................................ii
Key words..................................................................................................................................................iii
1.0 Background..........................................................................................................................................1
1.1 Research objectives and questions.....................................................................................................3
1.1.1 Proposed research objectives.......................................................................................................3
1.1.2 General objective..........................................................................................................................3
1.1.2.1 Specific objectives..................................................................................................................3
1.1.3 General research question............................................................................................................4
1.1.3.1 Specific research questions....................................................................................................4
2.0 Literature review.................................................................................................................................5
2.1 Economic importance of protection of sensitive personal data....................................................6
2.2 Technological approaches that can be used to uphold maximum protection of sensitive
personal information.............................................................................................................................7
2.2.1 Computers and communication networks..............................................................................8
2.2.2 Internet and social media.........................................................................................................9
2.2.3 Cryptography............................................................................................................................9
2.3 Research gaps...................................................................................................................................9
3.0 Methodology review..........................................................................................................................10
3.1 Research design.............................................................................................................................10
3.2 Qualitative research design...........................................................................................................10
3.3 Quantitative research design........................................................................................................10
3.4 Research techniques......................................................................................................................11
3.4.1 Interviews................................................................................................................................11
3.4.2 Questionnaires........................................................................................................................11
3.4.3 Surveys....................................................................................................................................12
3.4.4 Focus groups...........................................................................................................................12
3.4.5 Desk research..........................................................................................................................12
3.4.6 Observation.............................................................................................................................12
3.5 Chosen methodology......................................................................................................................12
3.5.1 Interview..................................................................................................................................12
3.5.2 Survey......................................................................................................................................13
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3.6 Data analysis..................................................................................................................................13
4.0 Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................13
References.................................................................................................................................................14
Appendices...............................................................................................................................................18
Appendix A..........................................................................................................................................18
Project plan: Gantt chart................................................................................................................18
Appendix B: Ethical issues..................................................................................................................20
Appendix C: Consent form.................................................................................................................21
Appendix D: Pilot Study Interview....................................................................................................23
Appendix E: Senior Organization Staffs’ Interview.........................................................................24
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1.0 Background
Information is generally important in every activity we are engaged in in our daily life activities.
Information can be defined as timely accurate data that are specifically organized for a purpose
whose meaning and relevance is as per the given context (Forster, 2015). Some information are
general while others can be classified as being personal information (Tang, Qu, Wang, Zhang,
Yan and Mei, 2015). All the gathered information depending on their relevance and importance
have been under protection in any given environment (Ben-Yochanan, Neystadt, Nice, Uritsky
and Malaviarachchi, Microsoft Corp, 2012). As a result, laws have been formed outlining the
principles under which businesses and government should accurately handle and protect data as
highlighted in the Data Protection Act (Koops and Leenes, 2014). Safety of data is one of the
aspects every state, business and any working environment yearn for since unauthorized access
to the data by unauthorized persons would jeopardize the organization or a country (Crawford
and Schultz, 2014). Sensitivity of the data depends highly on the importance the data holds and
varies across all states, businesses and other working environments (Al Ameen, Liu and Kwak,
2012). For instance, data that is important for one business might not be important for another
business selling parallel goods and services. In that instance therefore, sensitive information is
defined as data that needs to be protected from unauthorized access to ensure their maximum
privacy or security of either an individual, organization or a country (Friedman, Kahn, Borning
and Huldtgren, 2013). Consequently, sensitive personal information is that information which if
disclosed, lost or compromised would result to a great inconveniency, unfairness to people or
individuals, embarrassment and even harm (Richards, 2014). They can as well be referred to as
confidential personal information. They are in most cases stored in the secluded cabinets from
other information for reasons of upholding their confidentialities (Blue, Scott, Squibb and
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Willoughby, International Business Machines Corp, 2015; Liu, Huang and Liu, 2015). Any
access to these kind of information by unauthorized people or parties can possibly result to
criminal activities i.e. if the information are for an organization, which could result to losses and
even paralyze the operations of the organization. Examples of sensitive personal information
include people’s political opinions, trade union activities, racial and ethnic origin, religious
beliefs, mental or physical health, details concerning criminal offenses and even sexual life of
people among others.
Criminals are known for taking advantage of such sensitive personal information to undertake or
plan for their criminal activities. Just to mention a few, the referred criminal activities could be
theft, stalking, blackmailing or even terrorism and other crimes that would keep lives of
individuals at stake (Jackson and Zenou, 2015). Countries, business organizations both small
scales and large scales and even individuals at their own personal levels and social life are
fighting so hard to protect their personal information against the access by anyone (Mittal and
Kaur, 2013). ICT development has in the recent past been with the aim of protecting data making
the ICT professionals and technologists to exhaust all their knowledge and ideas to bring things
in order in regards to offering protection to sensitive data (Davies and Perini, 2016). Such kind of
approach and efforts by all across board have some economic importance to the countries. For
example, if sensitive personal information of a business organization like banks is broken into or
accessed by unauthorized person, the information can be used by the parties or those individuals
to perpetrate crimes by stealing money from the bank. If the amount lost through theft is too
large, the operations of that particular bank would be tampered with and this might result to
some branches of the bank being closed down either temporarily or permanently if any and the
workers might be offloaded and rendered jobless thus affecting the economic growth of a
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country. Sensitive national security details of a country once accessed by the terrorists, they can
be used by the terrorists to terrorize the country or even attack the country thus causing harm
(Jonathan-Zamir and Weisburd, 2013). In regards to that, the ICT professionals in the world
innovated security systems (cloud data protection, big data encryption, data access governance,
GDPR Risk Assessment by Snow Software etc.) that are used to safely store sensitive personal
information of a country, business organizations and even those of individuals at individual
levels (Hashem, Yaqoob, Anuar, Mokhtar, Gani and Khan, 2015; Stallings, Brown, Bauer and
Bhattacharjee, 2012). The information security systems operate under highly coded uncrack-able
passwords that are used to bar unauthorized parties or individuals from accessing sensitive
personal information (Nicodemus and Stephens, 2015; Ben-Asher and Gonzalez, 2015). This
study is therefore proposing to conduct an investigation on the importance of protecting sensitive
personal information.
1.1 Research objectives and questions
Proposals lead to the research that are guided by the research questions to meet a particular
objective for which the research was conducted. As a result, the research objectives and research
questions will be as stated below;
1.1.1 Proposed research objectives
The research objectives are divided into general objectives and specific objectives. In other
researches, general objectives are referred as primary objectives and specific objectives as
secondary objectives.
1.1.2 General objective
To assess the importance of protecting sensitive personal information. This proposal will be
guided towards meeting the stated objective.
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1.1.2.1 Specific objectives
1. To determine the economic importance of sensitive personal data protection.
2. To evaluate the technological approaches that can be employed to maximize protection of
sensitive personal information.
1.1.3 General research question
The proposed guiding question in this proposal will be, “What are the importance of protecting
sensitive personal information?”
1.1.3.1 Specific research questions
1. What are the economic importance of sensitive personal data protection?
2. What are some of the technological approaches that can be employed to maximize
protection of sensitive personal information?
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2.0 Literature review
Researches that have been carried out containing personal information are subject to data
protection (Li, 2012; Wu, Chung, Lai and Chen, 2012). In regards to this, the previous literatures
showed that the act enforcement was done by information commissioner’s office highlighting the
responsibilities or the organizations with respect to handling sensitive personal information and
giving individuals rights over their personal information (Reding, 2012). Important information
concerning data protection act together with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
reforms are offered by UCL Data Protection Office (de-Montjoye, Wang, Pentland, Anh and
Datta, 2012). All the regulations brought forth were towards offering enough protection to the
sensitive personal information. Researchers tend to anonymize sensitive personal information of
their respondents in case they were used (Acquisti, John and Loewenstein, 2013). For instance,
the medical researchers who use patients’ medical records are thereby advised to conceal those
information and keep them out of access to any unauthorized persons (Townend and Wright,
2017). Different professional fields require different levels of personal information protection.
For instance, medical practitioners are not in any way whatsoever to disclose their patients’
medical information to unauthorized people (Cohen et al, 2012). They can only do that with the
permission of the patient which is in accordance to their professional ethics (Truog, 2012). On
the same, it was reviewed from the previous research that there are circumstances under which
sensitive personal information can be processed lawfully without full consent of the concerned
person (Abelson et al, 2015). Such circumstances include; the information required for legal
proceedings, personal information concerning medical purposes undertaken by health
professionals or other medical practitioners and also for in the purposes of equal opportunities.
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2.1 Economic importance of protection of sensitive personal data
Companies have been able to collect large amount of data since the emergence and rise of
“information society” in the previous few years (Wu, Zhu, Wu and Ding, 2014). Unstructured
data are accompanied with challenges of their interpretations and they develop from interaction
between humans and machines (Chen, Chiang and Storey, 2012). The businesses in the EU are
provided with the customers’ personal information in various occasions such as when having
access to medical care, when using the credit card services or at the time of interaction between
business and the consumers through the social media (Erevelles, Fukawa and Swayne, 2016).
The use of sensitive personal information to enhance the interaction between the customers and
the businesses have changed in the EU due to technological developments since they introduced
the first EU regulatory framework concerning data protection (Kuner, 2012). This have increased
the contact time between the businesses and their customers and through the personal data, the
businesses are able to innovate other products to suit the customers’ needs thus increasing their
revenues (Boons and Lüdeke-Freund, 2013). New requirements and liabilities would be added by
GDPR on both the businesses and the consumers across the globe. As a result, interaction with
foreign economic operators will be restricted resulting to trade limitation, efficient sourcing of
data processing and competition (Bharadwaj, El Sawy, Pavlou and Venkatraman, 2013).
Maintaining data privacy and upholding the data protection laws improve both local and
international trade since human rights are supposed to be obeyed (Wamba, Akter, Edwards,
Chopin and Gnanzou, 2015). The focus now is to implement and uphold the existing data
privacy regulation since introduction of some new data privacy regulations will result to negative
implications on both the local and international trade through imposing and additional cost. With
respect to that, the additional costs would be over the entire implementation process and the
extraterritorial application on the non-members of the EU would have great barrier that will
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hinder supply of services in the supply chains between the rest of the world and the EU entities
(Tene and Polonetsky, 2012). As a result therefore, literature reviews revealed that the whole
global trading system would be affected (Tene and Polonetsky, 2012). Due to the various reasons
for which people prefer their personal data kept safely any business venture that happens to fully
observe the general data and protection act is most likely to win the loyalty of their customers
(McKenna, Richardson and Thomson, 2012). That being one of the qualities of customers that
business organizations yearn for, keeping the customers will ensure the constant flow of business
income.
National security is one of the most sensitive areas and matter of national importance to any
country around the globe from developed to developing countries (Chubin, 2014). Having these
information leaked to the terrorism groups would put the country at the verge of being attacked.
Such information (security information details) are deemed sensitive and should worth having
the ultramodern protection from being accessed by unauthorized people (Crowley, 2015).
Terrorism attack of any form to a nation might result to economic sabotage since most of the
economic activities would be paralyzed e.g. businesses, transportation, schooling etc. being
affected (Choi, 2014). As a result, the economic input of all the affected sectors will be lost due
fear of being attacked or falling victims of the attack or being taken hostages by the attackers. In
regard s to that, sensitive security data are to be protected and maintained private for the peaceful
daily activities of a country.
2.2 Technological approaches that can be used to uphold maximum protection of
sensitive personal information
Uncertainties and failure to know who plans what against who are some of the big questions that
impose fear in the lives of people in their lives left with no option than to look for ways of
protecting their sensitive personal information (Baumgart, First Data Corp, 2015). Traditional
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