Information protection is a way to ensure that the personal information of individuals stays private and secure from malicious actors such as hackers. It is a fundamental human right that’s been incorporated in law in dozens of countries. In the end, ensuring private data privacy of individuals boosts economic growth by helping customers feel safe with their credit card information as well as home addresses. That trust helps them shop online, sign up for more informational products, and generally interact with companies.

Information security is a set procedures and practices that are designed to prevent unauthorized access, modification or loss of information, whether it is in storage or during transmission. It covers both technical and operational aspects, from the structure of the system to security audits and information governance.

Password-protected documents, like protect against any unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information. Encryption, which muddles data so that even should it fall into the wrong hands, they cannot get any value from it without a key to decrypt it helps maintain confidentiality. It is important to take inventory of all devices that could have sensitive information stored therein from file cabinets to employees’ home laptops, mobile devices and flash drives.

Information protection is usually part of an organisation’s overall information assurance program. Together, the goal is to balance the protection of information’s confidentiality, integrity and accessibility (known as the CIA triad) while allowing for effective policy data room effectiveness implementation that doesn’t harm organizational productivity. MIT’s revised Written Information Security Program is an articulation of this concept which classifies Institute research and administrative data based on the risk level.