Celebrate Data Privacy Week 2026 with JANUS Associates. Strengthen cybersecurity, reduce breach risk, and build a resilient data protection and privacy program.
This year, Data Privacy Week runs January from 26th to 30th and led by the National Cybersecurity Alliance (staysafeonline.org) under the theme “Take Control of Your Data.” The campaign emphasizes that privacy is a fundamental right: the right to control access to your personal life and information, including your online identity, browsing habits, and the messages you send.
For security and risk leaders, it is a high-visibility opportunity to strengthen governance, educate stakeholders, and demonstrate accountable stewardship of customer and employee data.
This year’s focus areas include understanding what data is collected about you, how it is used and shared, the trade‑off between convenience and privacy, and practical steps individuals and organizations can take to reduce unnecessary data exposure. For security and risk leaders, it is a high‑visibility moment to demonstrate accountable stewardship of customer, patient, constituent, and employee data across digital channels.
The latest IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report shows the global average cost of a breach has climbed into multi‑million‑dollar territory, with even higher averages in the United States. Breaches are increasingly driven by compromised credentials, phishing, and shadow data, records and systems that sit outside formal visibility and controls.
IBM’s 2025 findings also highlight that organizations rushing into AI without robust security and governance face higher breach likelihood and higher incident costs, especially where ungoverned AI systems process sensitive data. For boards and executives, this combination of escalating breach costs, AI‑driven exposure, and growing consumer privacy expectations makes data privacy a core component of enterprise risk management, not just an IT issue.
Data Privacy Week is framed around empowering organizations and individuals to understand how their data is collected, shared, used, and how to reduce unnecessary exposure. The NCA’s tip sheets on empowering people and organizations to understand, limit, and actively manage their data footprint. For enterprises, this translates into several practical principles that align with NIST CSF, NIST Privacy Framework, ISO 27001, ISO/IEC 27701, and CIS Controls.
Know what you collect: Map personal and sensitive data across SaaS, on‑prem, cloud, and third‑party systems to eliminate shadow data and orphaned datasets.
Limit what you keep: Apply data minimization and defensible retention to reduce the blast radius of a breach while aligning with privacy laws and sector regulations.
Control who has access: Implement least‑privilege access, strong identity security for users and non‑human identities, and continuous review of entitlements.
Protect data in motion and at rest: Use encryption, classification, and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to enforce policy consistently across devices, collaboration tools, and cloud workloads.
Prepare for the worst day: Maintain and test incident response, backup, and recovery procedures so that detection, containment, and remediation are measured in hours, not months.
Data Privacy Week is an ideal window to launch or reinforce concrete, measurable actions that reduce risk and demonstrate accountability. If you're unsure where to begin, JANUS recommends starting on these five high‑impact initiatives:
Identify where regulated and high‑value data resides (customer, patient, financial, student, or employee records) across cloud, email, collaboration platforms, and line‑of‑business apps. Use the results to close obvious gaps, such as unprotected repositories, overshared folders, legacy systems, and uncontrolled data exports.
Conduct a tabletop exercise built around a realistic data breach scenario involving AI or cloud applications, and measure time to decision, communication quality, and technical readiness. Validate notification workflows, legal review, regulator engagement, and downstream customer communication to ensure compliance with privacy regulations and contracts.
Use the official Data Privacy Week messaging from NCA to reinforce simple, high‑value actions such as enabling MFA, reviewing app permissions, and managing privacy settings. Publish clear, plain‑language explanations of how your organization collects, uses, and protects data, reinforcing trust with stakeholders.
Our team of experts delivers cybersecurity and data protection consulting that help organizations move from ad‑hoc controls to a governed, auditable, and resilient privacy posture aligned with industry best practices and Data Privacy Week’s call to “take control of your data.”
JANUS combines IT risk and privacy assessments, data mapping, and control evaluations against NIST, ISO 27001, and CIS to identify and remediate gaps across infrastructure and SaaS environments. We offer data governance and compliance consulting services that embed principles and sectoral requirements such as HIPAA, GLBA, and FERPA, supported by strong encryption, key management, and DLP across hybrid environments.
To reduce the impact of inevitable incidents, we build and test privacy-centric incident response, and breach readiness plans that uncover shadow IT and shadow AI before they become attack vectors. We tailor privacy and security awareness campaigns that reinforce secure behaviors around data handling, phishing, and AI tool use; helping organizations turn Data Privacy Week into measurable, year‑round data protection progress.
Organizations that invest in privacy and data protection consistently reduce breach impact, accelerate recovery, and maintain stakeholder trust, even as AI and cloud adoption reshape the risk landscape. Data Privacy Week 2026 and a conversation with JANUS are ideal catalysts to evaluate your current posture, close critical gaps, and set a roadmap for sustainable, framework‑aligned data privacy governance.
JANUS partners with public and private sector organizations to build sustainable privacy and cybersecurity programs that stand up to regulators, customers, and real‑world threats. To align your Data Privacy Week initiatives with a long‑term cyber risk and privacy strategy, schedule a cybersecurity and data privacy consultation and begin taking control of your data story.