If you have any experience with web design, you should be aware that a site consists of numerous elements. Examples include navigation, branding, visual graphics, and content, among others.
Naturally, when building a website, you have to take into consideration these elements. For example, to ensure proper branding, it’s crucial to include your company’s logo. Similarly, if you want to improve navigation, you have to add icons that act as a shortcut button to get to various pages.
Simply put, there are specific steps and guidelines you must follow for each element of the website. And that’s especially true when it comes to data privacy.
Data privacy ensures that the information about your visitors is safe from any malicious intent. You need to make sure user data doesn’t get out to the public. If you plan on designing a website while focusing on data privacy, here are a few things you can do:
1. Comply To Privacy Policies
First of all, you have to make sure you comply with the privacy policies of your state when designing your website. Not only can it serve as a checklist for website creation, but you can also be penalized if you’re not compliant. Take note, the policies of each state differ from one another. If your main office is in California, for example, you have to read a guide to your privacy policies as they most likely would be different from the guidelines of other states like Arizona or Michigan.
2. Write Your Privacy Policy Manually
A privacy policy is a document that serves as a disclosure on how an entity handles its users’ data. In your case, it’ll explain to your visitors how you collect data and where you use it.
Most of the time, the website requires visitors to agree to the privacy policy before they disclose any information about them. Traditionally, when writing a privacy policy, you have to consider a lot of things. But due to the advent of internet technology, website owners can now easily create privacy policies with a click of a mouse using an automatic generator tool. While it might be tempting to rely on such tools, it’s advisable to write your privacy policy manually.
3. Implement Strict Password Rules
When building and designing a website, you’ll eventually have to implement how you handle login credentials. Normally, you’d require the user to login in order to access certain features. If you don’t know, you can set up the rules for creating passwords.
For example, you can allow pretty much any password as long as it has at least four characters.
However, since you aim to ensure data privacy, it’s best if you implement strict password rules such as:
– Including at least eight characters
– Adding at least one lowercase and uppercase letter
– Including numbers into the mix
– Inserting at least one special character (e.g. !, @, ?, #, etc.)
Doing so would prevent hackers from forcing their way into your system and stealing user data by guessing passwords. Of course, a strong password is one way of improving data privacy.
4. Consider Multi-Factor Authentication
An excellent web design tip that you can use in conjunction with the previous advice is multi-factor authentication. You may have heard of it before. Basically, it’s when you require multiple factors instead of one (the password). By requiring multiple factors, you’re essentially increasing the number of layers of protection against hackers that have malicious intent.
Examples of authentication factors you can use include:
– One-time passwords (OTPs)
– Biometrics (e.g. fingerprint, face, voice, etc.)
– Personal question and answer
5. Make Use Of SSL Encryption
If you work with websites frequently, you should know about the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). These are two types of encryptions that serve as an extra layer of protection for your system. For starters, SSL ensures that whenever data is being transferred from one place to another, no one can read it. This would prevent any intervention when data is most vulnerable.
6. Encourage Data Minimization
Data minimization refers to the practice of collecting the info you need—no more, no less. In short, you’re ‘minimizing’ the data within your system. That way, when a hacker successfully infiltrates the database, they won’t get much other than basic information such as the user’s name or email address. It’s similar to SSL encryption in a way that you can minimize damage in case of data invasion. Hence, it’s advisable to encourage minimization during the website creation process.
Conclusion
Website owners have neglected data privacy for a long time. But due to the ever-increasing number of cybersecurity threats, it’s become one of the essential elements of a website. After all, not only does it protect confidential data that can compromise business operations, but it also provides a better user experience to your visitors. Indeed, there’s no harm in improving data privacy.
