A company’s data—commercial, operational, and personal—is often among its most valuable assets. It may include, for example, customer and sales data, billing and payment information, employee and HR records, and operational or logistics data.
To manage this information, companies routinely engage third-party vendors or service providers to store, process, and analyze it on their behalf. Where that information includes personal data, the contract between those parties becomes an important tool for allocating risk and defining responsibilities.
Data protection is best approached as a shared obligation between a company and its vendors, shaped by the nature of the data, the services being performed, and the overall risk profile of the engagement.
