Fines, penalties, fees… Oh my! But by mismanaging PII, we stand to lose more than just money. It’s time to look at what’s at stake and learn how to avoid these numerous pitfalls.

It’s All About the Money

Unfortunately, for many people and companies, the only time they actually start to care is the moment their wallet gets involved. Taking the time to properly collect and store Personal Identifiable Information (PII) seems like nothing more than a nuisance until the metaphorical Feds start knocking at your door.

Although we’d hope businesses around the world would protect our PII simply because it’s the right thing to do, many of them instead attempt to max profits while hoping the subsequent fine will pale in comparison.

But the regulators have finally caught up with such strategies and imposed penalties that aren’t your typical slap on the wrist. Just look at the largest GDPR fine ever: Meta (formerly Facebook) was fined €1.2 billion for unlawful personal data transfer. Altogether, the GDPR has acted as the basis for over 4 billion euros in penalties for the mishandling of PII.

More to Lose

We all know money talks, but there are other negative effects of mishandling PII that certainly all companies are looking to sidestep. Aside from penalties and fines, the next pin to fall is a business’s reputation.

This well-known quote states it perfectly. Since the very first day your company was born, you could try your darndest to follow every regulation and directive placed upon you. You could collect, store, and manage PII with nothing short of precision from Day 1.

But all that goodwill can disappear in an instant the moment you decide to sell customer data to third-party advertisers without their consent or even suffer a data breach you never saw coming. If we return to our example from above, it’s been estimated that as little as 10% of Americans trust Facebook, and that number has shrunk to a mere 6% after news of the giant fine came out.

Talk about a loss in reputation. But Facebook isn’t the only social media company sailing the waters of mistrust and bad names. TikTok is currently on the brink of being outright banned in the US, with many researchers citing its connection to the Chinese government and its shady data collection practices.

The List Goes On

But the potential consequences of mishandling PII don’t end there. Financial penalties and a bad reputation are just the beginning. Here are a few of the other potential situations and negative results of PII being managed incorrectly.

And note that not all necessarily damage the company itself but rather its users and customers too.

Both the companies and their data subjects have so much to lose when PII isn’t collected and stored correctly. So, what exactly can they do to avoid all of the headaches and losses mentioned above?

Discovery Leads to Compliance

The fastest way to mishandle PII is to not adhere to relevant regulations. You’ve (hopefully) heard of most of them before. We’re talking about the GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, CPRA, GLBA… and countless other abbreviations.

By not achieving compliance with these directives, businesses instantly become at risk for everything described above. In other words, compliance is key. And the first step to regulatory compliance is to actually locate and then organize your company’s stored PII.

That’s where data discovery tools come in. It’s pretty hard to follow strict guidelines like the GDPR if you don’t even know what sort of PII you’ve got and where. By using AI-driven data discovery software, you can uncover any weak points in your compliance armor and automatically remedy at-risk data.

The Right Thing

Mishandling PII has more consequences than we could possibly hope to discuss in a single article. But if we strip away all the fines, data breaches, and reputational losses, we’re left with only the core value that truly matters: Protecting PII is a responsibility, not a liability.

In other words, it’s our job to handle PII correctly simply because it’s the right thing to do. Not only can you avoid all the tragic and financially damning scenarios mentioned here, but you get to do right by your user base, letting them know they can always trust you with their PII.

And that’s true value worth investing in.

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