How familiar are you with the various ways you can protect your data?

To help raise the public’s awareness around data security, the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) is hosting a Data Privacy Day on January 28. It’s part of the nonprofit’s perennial privacy awareness campaign to educate all internet users to be safer online and “to inspire everyone to own their online presence with simple, actionable steps,” said Michael Kaiser, NCSA’s executive director, in a statement.

It’s been two years since the massive cybertheft at retail giant Target, which exposed the payment data and personal information of millions of customers, and since that time many more data breaches have followed, including among associations.

A 2015 survey of cybersecurity professionals from the information systems association ISACA found that 74 percent expected their organization to be targeted by a cyberattack.

NCSA’s dedicated privacy day aims to encourage greater accountability among consumers to better understand how their information is being shared. For example, it advises people when posting about themselves or others online to think about what a post could reveal and how it could be perceived in the future. NCSA is also advocating for greater privacy awareness among businesses that are collecting and sharing consumer data.

“To build a culture of privacy awareness and greater customer engagement, NCSA also urges businesses to clearly communicate to consumers what information about them is collected, how it is used and what tools are available to control the use of their data,” Kaiser said. “Collecting information about people requires building a high level of trust that the information is adequately protected and only used in appropriate and expected ways.”

On January 28, NCSA will host events in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles where privacy professionals will discuss solutions to current challenges as well as best practices, such as how to detect cyber intrusions and developing an incident response plan. NCSA will also hold Twitter chats centered around data privacy in the days leading up to Data Privacy Day.

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