Privacy and Data Protection Blog

In our blog we inform you regularly about current changes and developments around the area of ​​data protection laws, data protection guidelines, and data protection regulations.

As one of the largest companies with headquarters in Germany and the USA, our employees are privacy experts and also lawyers. We regularly publish the most important and up-to-date news as well as articles in our privacy blog.

Definition of Data Privacy

The definition of data protection is 'the protection of individuals against attacks on their privacy through the unauthorised collection, storage and disclosure of data (2 ) relating to them'.

Data protection in short - is the protection of personal data. This protection receives the basic right of persons through the so-called informational self-determination. This in turn comprises two factors:

• Every person concerned - a natural person whose personal data are processed - has the right to determine and/or disclose information independently.
• Every data subject has the right to determine independently not to disclose information.

This means that citizens have the right to decide who is responsible for the processing of their personal data and what can be done with it. The data protection laws of the Data Protection Basic Regulation (DSGVO) regulate the collection, use, storage and disclosure of personal data. 

Data protection Basic Regulation

The basic data protection regulation, also known as the DSGVO, regulates data uniformly throughout Europe. This regulation was introduced in 2018 after a two-year implementation period. These not only guidelines, but also regulations leave no more room for maneuver and punish anyone who does not comply with them with up to 20 million euros or 4 percent of the worldwide turnover in the previous financial year with a regular fine.

Data protection and data security

because they are similar, it is often asked what the real difference between data protection and data security is, as these words are often used synonymously or in the same context;

Data protection - as described above, according to the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Information Security (BfDI), data protection is "the protection of every citizen against improper data processing, the right to informational self-determination and the protection of privacy". Thus, data protection is the right of all citizens, whose data misuse simultaneously violates their personal rights and basic rights.

Data security-this term is related to data protection. The nuance is that data security describes all data processed by a company and not only the data of citizens. For example, technical solutions or measures to protect general data that do not relate to any specific person.

The bottom line is that data protection applies to protect people's rights over their personal data. Data security, in turn, is to secure general data that has nothing to do with specific individuals, because data protection is a human right. If you want to learn more about this topic, you are welcome to have a look at our other blog posts at www.2b-advice.com