Data Protection
Data protection especially those sensitive data has been a problem ever since the boom of the networked and internet technology. It is very difficult to ensure protection of data. Successful Protection of data includes utilizing data protection software and mechanism available in the market combined with personal responsibilities. (Shuster, 2006)
Personally, we could be able to protect our data and that means being extra responsible in the data exchanges and the data storages that we have. A person must be extra careful in releasing personal information that could be used by others to have access in your data. However, with the current trends in the market and the existence of several other software that are used by experts to crack data, data protection needs help from the market. That is by using software and other methods of protecting data like firewall, ant viruses and setting strong encrypted passwords.
We cannot say that data protection is for the rich alone because successful data protection cannot be relied on the market alone. The market provides some tools that help us protect the data but it is up to the individual on how to utilize these tools. In addition to these, a person does not always need to buy data protection software because of the existence of several open-source softwares that could be used. The product might have excellent features but we didn’t take responsibility in securing our passwords. Yes, most people are busy, but there are still simple steps that can be done to help the market available data protection methods that can be done which does not actually requires additional time from the users. That simple step is just to accept personal responsibility of whatever data that is within our control.
Privacy
Egypt’s data protection and privacy laws have been experiencing numerous upgrades since the restoration of democracy in the country. Data protection and privacy has has not been a major concern of the past administration of Mubarak’s reign. Although there were existing laws on telecommunication privacy, they were not properly enforced.
The country has no existing national policy on data protection. Instead, it data protection relies on the company or organizations data protection rules. There is no national la that regulates what personal information of people can be kept by the organizations thus making it prone to abuse in the privacy of individuals. (Carson, 2011) The United States however, is implementing an almost the same data protection and privacy law by making private institutions have a self-regulatory rules. The commission incharge of these are encouraging the private sector to voluntarily come-up with codes of conduct. The European Union however, does not conform with the self-regulatory policy of the United States saying that this approach is inadequate to full protection. The European Union has a standing privacy and data protection law that passed legislation and is applicable to both private and public institutions. (Stratford, 1998)
Egypt has plans to upgrade it’s data protection and privacy laws to include among others detail ways of protecting the privacy of it’s citizens specially relating to the collection of personal data by the policemen and the period that that data will be kept by them. It also plans to passed a legislation that institutionalize data protection rules across public and private organizations.
References:
Carson, Angelique, 2011, Plans for Data Retention and Privacy Laws in Egypt. Available at < https://www.privacyassociation.org/publications/plans_for_data_retention_and_privacy_laws_in_egypt> [Accessed 14 April 2012].
Shuster, Steve, 2006, Why Can’t we Protect our Data. Available at
Stratford, Jean (1008), Data Protection and Privacy in the United States and Europe[pdf]. Available at
