Today marks Data Privacy Day (http://dataprivacyday2011.org/) around the world. Organised, to promote awareness of data protection, Data Privacy Day is a great opportunity to highlight the need for a tightening of data security industry-wide.

Given the recent wave of web-attacks, lost laptops and lost data, the event serves as a timely reminder to the wider public and global business community that it is absolutely essential that we continue to campaign for a strengthening of data protection practices today.

Raising awareness of the issue is absolutely key, as consumers clearly need a greater understanding of their rights when it comes to data privacy. However, to be truly effective, we at Cyber-Ark believe that data protection must be top of mind 24/7.  And this is where organisations absolutely must play their part.

It is for the businesses and organisations with whom consumers entrust their data, to ensure that all confidential information is held securely and is not subjected to any form of infiltration.  That means implementing a secure, robust and auditable system that allows the safe transfer and sharing of data, whilst also allowing firms to log all of the access to, and movement of, the information.  This is the only way to effectively protect data and maintain public faith in security systems.