The risk of damage comes from ESD (static discharge) and EMF (inductive coupling from nearby circuits).

You can guard in two ways:

1. shielded cables, with appropriately grounded connectors
2. surge suppression diodes

You will still experience data loss during ESD/EMF events, but will be able to avoid catastrophic damage.

To minimize data loss, you have two possibilities:

1. [transceivers](https://www.ti.com/lit/ug/tiduei0/tiduei0.pdf?ts=1693440058882) which typically incorporate protection, as well as transmit the signal over a differential connection to eliminate common-mode transients.
2. lower data rates in the 100Kbps range or less