Data Privacy Week: January 27-31, 2025

Written by Michelle Wong – Marketing Specialist

What is Data Privacy Week?

Each year the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) organizes Data Privacy Week to educate people about the importance of safeguarding personal data and ensuring online privacy and safety.

The goal of Data Privacy Week is to spread awareness about online privacy and reminding individuals that you have the power to manage your data.

Data Privacy Week for IT Providers & MSPs

IT Providers and MSPs can use Data Privacy Week as an opportunity to teach your clients about their data privacy and to remind end users to double check the information they are sharing on their apps and devices.

We’ve put together some information and resources to help you educate your end users.

Why is Data Privacy Week Important?

Data is collected everyday – from your computer, smartphone, smartwatch, and pretty much every other internet-connected device. All of your online activity generates a trail of data.

Data Privacy Week acts as a reminder to double check and update the settings on your apps, accounts and connected devices to decide how this data is collected and used.

Privacy Trends in Tech

Even the tech titans like Apple are bowing to the importance of data privacy as evidenced by their 2020 decision to roll out the Apple App Tracking Transparency feature to iOS 14.5. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature allows users to choose whether an app can track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites for advertising targeting. The impact of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature upended the mobile ad industry, which largely relies on user data.

With the emergence of AI (artificial intelligence) and the ever-changing landscape of technology and cybersecurity, we expect to see more laws and regulations around data privacy, following the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018 across Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in 2019 in the US.

But complying with regulations and relying on the tech industry to design better privacy controls isn’t enough. It’s important to proactively protect yourself, your clients and your company from unnecessary data collection.

Take Control of Your Data

The 2025 theme for Data Privacy Week is ‘Take Control of your Data’. Here are some easy tips and reminders from the NCA to help you manage your data privacy:
 

• Know the trade-off between privacy and convenience – does each app or account need access to certain data (such as your contacts or photos or camera)?
• Adjust privacy settings to your comfort level. Audit your apps, accounts, and double check the privacy and security settings on your devices.
• Protect your data with several layers of security, including using secure passwords and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Install updates – as annoying as is to take time to update your software, it is important because updates help patch security flaws, deploy bug fixes, add new features, and help keep your devices running smoothly.



More 2025 IT Holidays + Free Marketing Resources


Check out our blog post on 2025 IT Holidays for more cybersecurity awareness days, and download our free marketing resources to help educate your end users about how they can stay safe in our digital world.

Below are some additional resources from the National Cybersecurity Alliance.

Resources:


• What is Data Privacy And Why Should you Care?
• Data Privacy Week
• Take Control of Your Data
• Cybersecurity Predictions for 2025: Challenges and Opportunities