Your business runs on data, but is it accountable?
We talk a lot about cyber security in terms of firewalls, endpoints, and threat detection. But let’s take a step back.
If your organisation doesn’t know what data it holds, where that data lives, who can access it, and why it’s being retained, then every security control you build is sitting on an unstable foundation.
This Privacy Awareness Week (PAW) 2025, the focus is on data privacy and protection. That starts with data governance, the kind that goes beyond compliance checklists and digs into actual business operations.
Here’s the hard truth:
It's challenging for organisations to have a current, complete data inventory. Sensitive data is scattered across systems, apps, backups, and emails. Business units spin up cloud solutions without oversight. Retention policies, if they exist, may be outdated or ignored.
The result?
Unknown exposures that undermine breach response plans
Over-retention that increases regulatory risk under privacy laws (think GDPR, CCPA, and Australia’s Privacy Act)
Excess storage costs for data that serves no business or legal purpose
Lost customer trust when data is mishandled or breached
This week, we encourage leadership, IT, compliance, and data teams to come together and ask:
Do we know what data we actually need to retain?
Are we storing data “just in case,” without a purpose or expiry?
Who is accountable for ongoing data lifecycle management?
Data minimisation isn’t just a legal principle, it’s a cyber resilience strategy:
Audit your data flows
Clean up unstructured data in legacy systems
Automate data retention enforcement
Build accountability into every function
Because data is only an asset when it’s controlled, when it’s not, it becomes a liability.
NSB Cyber is proud to support Privacy Awareness Week (PAW) 2025, running from 16th to 22nd June 2025. For more information about PAW Week, head here.
For information on NSB Cyber’s Cyber Resilience capabilities or to book a meeting with our team, click here.
