WHAT “DATA PRIVACY”
LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE

Late January is a useful reminder that privacy is not just a policy topic. It is an operational one too.

In North America, Data Privacy Week runs 26–30 January 2026.
Globally, Data Protection Day lands on 28 January, marking the anniversary of Convention 108 and its role in strengthening privacy and data protection.

Both have the same focus: protect people’s data, reduce risk, and build trust.

But “data privacy” can sometimes feel abstract, something that lives in documentation, governance, and approvals. The real test comes when something goes wrong: ransomware, accidental deletion, a cloud outage, a misconfiguration, or a compromised identity. In those moments, privacy becomes practical:

• Can you restore what matters, fast?
• Can you prove the data is clean?
• Can you limit exposure while recovering under pressure?
• Can you demonstrate control to executives, customers, and regulators?

At Harbor, this is what we mean by doing right by data: pairing strong protection with recovery that is measurable, tested, and ready when it counts.

Privacy is not only about access, it is about recoverability

Most privacy conversations start (rightly) with questions like: who can access data, why are we collecting it, and how long should we retain it?

But there is a parallel set of questions that often gets less attention and can create the biggest risks during incidents:

• Do we know where our most sensitive data lives across on-prem, cloud, and SaaS?
• Can we recover it quickly to meet operational and customer obligations?
• Can we recover it safely, without reintroducing malware or exposing data in uncontrolled ways?
• Can we prove it, through drills, reporting, and evidence?

This is where privacy and resilience meet.

Five privacy blind spots that show up during incidents

1) No single view of the data estate

When data is spread across platforms, business units, and SaaS tools, privacy controls become inconsistent and recovery becomes slower than it needs to be.

What good looks like: a clear map of critical systems and data, with ownership, priority, and protection approach agreed.

2) Recovery targets that are not grounded in reality

RTO/RPO targets are often set without factoring in dependencies, capacity, or the real-life complexity of recovery.

What good looks like: recovery objectives aligned to business priorities, backed by a plan and validated through testing.

3) Backups exist, but restores are not rehearsed

Backups are essential. But if restore workflows are not tested under realistic conditions, teams discover gaps at the worst possible moment.

What good looks like: a cadence of restore drills and scenario testing, with actions captured and improvements tracked.

4) Retention and recovery are pulling in different directions

Privacy programmes often focus on minimising retention. Recovery programmes focus on availability. Without alignment, you can end up with:

• data retained too long (risk and cost),
• data not retained long enough (business disruption), or
• data retained but not recoverable quickly (false confidence).

What good looks like: retention and recovery designed together, with clear rules for critical systems and regulated data.

5) Identity and SaaS sprawl creates hidden exposure

Access permissions drift. SaaS data grows. Shadow IT creeps in. The result is uneven protection and unclear recovery paths.

What good looks like: consistent protection across SaaS and core platforms, with visibility into where data is and how it is recovered.

Partner perspectives

“In practice, data privacy is not only a compliance discussion. It is about operational confidence. Customers want to know that if the worst happens, their data can be recovered quickly and safely.”
Joe Hepburn, Data Management Practice Lead, Bytes

What Harbor does differently: outcome-first recovery readiness

Harbor is a specialist managed service provider focused solely on data protection, recovery, and operational resilience. We help organisations protect critical data and regain control quickly after disruption — including when the incident starts with identity compromise.

Our managed services include:

• Backup as a Service (BaaS) for on-premises, cloud, and SaaS workloads
• Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) with SLA-backed recovery and secondary site continuity
• Cyber Recovery as a Service for assured, clean recovery following cyber incidents
• Identity Recovery to re-establish trusted access, restore key services safely, and support a controlled return to operations
• Assessment and consulting to strengthen your recovery posture
• Simulation and testing to validate recovery objectives through drills and scenario planning

We focus on measurable outcomes – improving recovery targets and providing the evidence leaders need to show recovery readiness.

We prioritise measurable improvements in recovery targets, giving boards confidence that resilience is not just promised, but proven. Our restore performance remains consistently high, including a 99.8% restore rate in January 2026, supported by 24x7x365 operations and a deeply technical delivery team.

“Working with Harbor has given us the assurance that we can recover our data in the event of a crisis.”
CIO, Institute of Cancer Research

A practical Data Privacy Week checklist

If you only do one thing this week, use this as a conversation starter internally:

1. Do we know our top critical systems and their dependencies?
2. Do we have agreed RTO/RPO targets for each, and are they realistic?
3. When did we last complete a full recovery exercise, not just a backup check?
4. Can we demonstrate a clean recovery approach after a cyber incident?
5. Do we have a “minimum viable company” plan (what must come back first)?
6. Are SaaS platforms covered consistently?
7. Do we know where regulated or sensitive data sits, and who owns it?
8. Are retention policies aligned with recovery needs and legal obligations?
9. Can we report recovery readiness in an executive-friendly way?
10. If an incident happened tomorrow, do we know who does what in the first 24 hours?

Start with a clear resilience roadmap: Harbor Lighthouse

For many organisations, the hardest part is not choosing tools. It is gaining a single view of readiness and agreeing what to fix first.

Harbor Lighthouse is our structured discovery and assessment programme that provides a single view of recovery readiness and a practical roadmap to improve it, using interactive dashboards, resilience scoring, and executive-level reporting.

Typical Lighthouse outputs include:

• a Minimum Viable Company workshop (define what must run to keep the business running)
• a Cyber Recovery Assessment, including mapping to frameworks such as NIST and DORA
• Disaster Recovery Scenario Planning, running realistic tabletop exercises with actionable outputs.

If you would like a clear, practical plan that turns privacy intent into recovery confidence, book a Lighthouse Discovery.