Sterling Bank Plc. has urged users of applications to familiarise themselves with the policies of the apps, before disclosing their data.
Olamide Jolaoso, Team Lead, Data Analytics and Insight, Sterling Bank, gave the advice during the 2019 International Data Privacy Day Celebration in Lagos.
The 4th Annual celebration was organised by the Data and Knowledge Information Privacy Protection Initiative (DKIPPI), with the theme – “Good Governance and Data Privacy: Creating a Framework for Nation Building’’.
Jolaoso said that being aware of the terms and conditions of the applications would ensure data privacy.
Data privacy, also called information privacy, is the aspect of information technology (IT) that deals with the ability an organisation or individual to determine what data in a computer system can be shared with third parties.
He said that data was everywhere in today’s world and was being generated every second at an astronomical rate.
According to him, this trend of generating and transmitting data also comes with its inherent challenges and issues; hence, the issue of data privacy.
“The digitisation of the world makes it easier to get access to and collect personal data. Data privacy, therefore, becomes more and more relevant to us in every facet of our daily lives.
“It is time for us all to pay more attention to data that we put out there whether online or manual.
“Let us familiarise ourselves with policies of various apps, websites that we subscribe to and how they use data collected from our interactions with them.
“It is very clear that in the coming years, the average consumer will hold a greater amount of power and say on how their data can be used; whether it is for research or marketing purposes.
“The more organisations learn and prepare for this, the more we move toward having data privacy and protection entrenched globally,” he said.
Jolaoso said that Sterling Bank took data privacy very seriously; hence, in 2018, it established an Enterprise Data Office.
He said that the establishment of the Enterprise Data Office demonstrated the bank’s commitment to ensuring that data was utilised correctly.
“One of the steps we have taken toward protecting the use of customer’s data was a first level assessment of Sterling’s compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), to better understand the impact this law will have on our customers doing business in EU countries.
“We also have a data governance framework within our organisation to better prepare all staff toward access, usage and control of data across the various touch points as it is being generated.
“’People seem to care more about their privacy now than they have in the past,’’ Jolaoso said.