Personally Identifiable

Chances are all business organization will collect information from its workers, customers, or their stakeholders once in a while. In this era of cybercrime, it becomes vital for an organization to protect all the inform ...

Chances are all business organization will collect information from its workers, customers, or their stakeholders once in a while. In this era of cybercrime, it becomes vital for an organization to protect all the information belonging to their team. Failure to do so has led to many legal issues and even the worst, bankruptcy. Breaching has been rampant, and that’s why National Institute of Standards and Technology and other institutions have come up with a recommendation on how to protect organizational data, by managing it, categorizing, safe storage, and fixing breaching once it happens. Any information that can be used in identifying or tracing a person is what is technically known as Personally Identifiable Information (PII). This paper discusses PII in depth, how to categorize information in an organization, and offers possible solutions to breaching cases as well as recommendations. What is Personally Identifiable Information? In simple terms, Personally Identifiable Information is any information that helps in identifying an individual. Data can be used to trace a person's identity. Some of the crucial information is a name, Information about the birthday, maiden name, education information, profession, email address, bank account number, employment, social security number, etc. Additionally, it could be other Information linked to a person like medical or employment details. Examples of PII include the following, and not limited to; individual's full name; personal identification number; passport, ID, etc., own address, personal characteristics like a picture of oneself or other identification like handwriting, fingerprints or biometric identities like voice or facial geometry.