What is an issue for a consumer, becomes an issue for a startup. For the last few years privacy has become a primary concern for users and consumers. Startups, as the most user-centric actors in the economy, have followed suit in ensuring customer safety and trust by tightly safeguarding both their business and consumer data.  

Data Privacy Day or Data Protection Day is celebrated every year on 28 January. It was created by the Council of Europe in 2006 to celebrate the signature of the Convention 108 for the Protection of Individuals with regard to automatic processing of personal data. For over 30 years the Convention has been a cornerstone of data protection, in Europe and beyond. The objective of Data Protection Day is to raise awareness among businesses and citizens and promote privacy and data protection best practices. 

Data is the cornerstone of the digital world. The mass digitisation of our services has brought with it concerns over data privacy and protection, which are now a part of our everyday discourse. This, in turn, spills over into public policy. The European Union was the first to act. The General Data Protection Regulation enacted in 2018 set the grounds for the protection of personal data in the EU by creating a framework where data subjects have control over the collection and processing of their data. Other regions in the world have taken inspiration from the GDPR and created their own privacy laws, such as the California Consumer Protection Act in the US.  

Startups invested critical resources into data protection when GDPR came into effect, but they’ve also become experts in running privacy businesses to meet their consumers’ standards. In the last years, startups have innovated in cybersecurity, blockchain, and other secure personal or private data sharing systems. Their goal is to provide businesses and consumers new services or products that will make their data more secure. 

Privacy has become even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic. People working remotely as an effect of COVID-19 have raised data protection issues. Businesses and public organisations had to allocate more resources to protect their data outside of their premises. As a result, privacy budgets and investments increased in 2020. 

Startups rose to the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic posed. They rapidly adapted their products and services to new demands. At Allied for Startups, we believe data protection is key to a well functioning data economy that simultaneously ensures the safety of citizens. We will keep promoting best practices for the sharing of data amongst startups!