The date was September 2, 2023, when UAE’s Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) was enforced. This was the first federal law of its kind, drafted in partnership with the private sector.

Over 30 technology giants were consulted on this. You can see some of the companies that were consulted below:

This law came into existence to protect the personal information and privacy of individuals and institutions in the UAE. Comparisons were immediately drawn to its European counterpart but the differences with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) make it stand out instead of being a copy/paste regulation.

There is a clear gap in the local business landscape due to the relatively new nature of PDPL. It hasn’t been around for long and companies aren’t aware of what it takes to comply with PDPL or what the penalties are for non-compliance.

Wateen Digital Solutions understood this gap and started offering compliance assessment and implementation services. This creates a synergy with Wateen Digital Solutions core services like Managed Cyber Security which are intrinsically linked with data protection and privacy but what exactly is data protection? Why is data protection even needed?

How does a cyber security solution go about protecting privacy when these solutions look into personal information as a key part of their function and how does Wateen Digital Solutions help businesses comply with the extent of applicability of the Federal Decree Law?

Read this blog till the end to find out the purpose of each role and how they align, starting with the meaning of data protection.

It is the process of protecting sensitive information from getting lost, corrupted, or compromised. You take actions to safeguard sensitive information from either cyber threats, human errors, or both.

With the amount of data that is produced daily, you need data protection solutions in place to stave off inevitable cyber attacks. Solutions that cyber security provides.

To ensure data protection, cyber security solutions offer a wide range of services including but not limited to:

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
• Intrusion Detection Systems
• Firewalls
• Data Encryptions
• Identify and Access Management (IAM)
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

Data protection and cyber security go hand in hand. One of the primary roles of cyber security is to prevent threat actors from getting their hands on sensitive information. Wateen Digital Solutions provides a solid cyber security infrastructure to prevent data leakages and data corruption to maintain your data privacy.

It can be a debated topic of how data privacy differs from data protection. While true, that these terms are interchangeable, they are not one and the same. Data privacy is about who has access to data and who can view it.

Data privacy is one of the key reasons behind the enforcement of UAE’s PDPL. While data protection is about preserving data and making sure it is available for use with ideally zero downtime, data privacy determines who has access to an individual’s personal health and personal identification information.

It determines who can process this information, where this information flows, and who’s responsible for it in case a data breach occurs.

Unauthorized access to sensitive personal information is devastating, especially on a larger scale like enterprises with hundreds if not thousands of employees.

That all changed as PDPL aims to safeguard the privacy of everyone within the UAE borders and has strict regulations in place for people processing sensitive information even if they’re located outside the borders.

It’s your choice on whom you give permission to process your information, how to process it, what to process it for, and make changes to it if required.

You can even ask for your personal information to be removed if you change your mind. The amount of choice you get for how your personal information is processed is what separates PDPL from GDPR.

Wateen Digital Solutions understands the implications of your data falling into the wrong hands hence its managed cyber security solutions.

We are also aware that personal information has to be processed at some point for cyber security purposes to ascertain if the information stored is safe and to implement measures to keep it safe.

The key is consent and we never disperse our clients’ sensitive information or have someone without access, view it. This goes true for all the services we provide.

This is to ensure that we stay ahead of trends by following regulations and that our clients operate without the fear of facing any penalties or lawsuits.

We take full responsibility for making sure our clients comply with PDPL by offering data audits, data mapping, PDPL compliance assessment, implementing data security best practices, and more. These services are on top of offering world-class managed cyber security solutions which have positioned us as a leading cybersecurity company.

You don’t need to trigger threat alerts to get our attention. Simply follow this link to get our attention and a subject matter expert will reach out to you to get your organization’s security requirements.