You have no excuse for failing to protect your customer’s data; your business depends on it!
If your business doesn’t take the required steps to protect consumer data, you’ll be vulnerable to a breach, which could cause consumer confidence to degrade. You’ll also face lawsuits, fines, and customers leaving. This is the last thing any business wants.
This threat is a very real one as well. After all, throughout the third quarter of 2022, approximately 15 million data records were exposed worldwide through cyber breaches.
Considering that, we’ll take you through some of the ways you can secure your customer’s data privacy effectively.
1. Abide by regulations such as GDPR
There’s only one place to begin, and this is by making sure you adhere to all of the rules and regulations that are in place regarding customer data privacy, with GDPR being a prime example.
What is GDPR? GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. This regulation changed privacy law around the world, forcing businesses to make monumental changes to their data privacy and protection practices.
Per GDPR, data subjects now have a number of rights, which are designed to boost transparency and give customers control over their personal data and how businesses use it.
These rights include the following:
- The right to be informed that you have collected their personal data and used it
- The right to object to their data being collected or used in any manner
- The right to data portability, i.e. to take their data from one platform to another in a safe, easy, and secure manner
- The right to restrict the processing of personal data
- The right to erase their personal data within 30 days
- The right to rectify incomplete or inaccurate personal data
- The right to access personal data and how it’s processed
2. Perform updates as soon as prompted
How many times have you clicked on ‘remind me later’ when you’re prompted to make a software update? We’ve all been there. We don’t want our workflow to be interrupted!
However, you need to ask yourself; why do software companies release updates? Well, it’s because they’re making the product better, andthey’re patching up vulnerabilities they have found.
So, if you don’t update the tool in question, you’re leaving yourself at risk of being hacked!
3. Educate employees
Did you know that the majority of data breaches are insider attacks? While this sometimes refers to malicious employees who’ve got bad intentions, these attacks are usually the result of employee mistakes.
After all, if you don’t teach your employees how to handle data securely, how do you expect them to do so?
Don’t simply assume that your employees know how to create strong passwords, how to transfer data safely, and so on. Regular training is a must to ensure your workers understand the correct steps to take.
Make sure you educate your employees on why data security relates to their role. When people understand why security is so critical, they’ll take it more seriously.
4. Install the correct tools
Unfortunately, there’s no single tool that automatically protects your business and ensures you have everything you need to keep data safe.
As hackers are getting increasingly sophisticated and using a wide range of tactics, this means you need to deploy various tools and approaches to protect your business.
Anti-spyware and anti-malware technology can often be built into smartphones and laptops as well, but make sure you double-check that they’ve been enabled correctly.
You should also look for encryption software. Encryption turns data into unreadable code, so even if a hacker does manage to breach your system, they won’t be able to read the data, which is imperative. The information security program from Tentacle offers advanced and centralized management with faster-security assessments.
The options don’t end there either! Multi-factor authentication is another approach to use. This means that individuals need to input more than simply a password to get access. Other security methods they may need to pass include entering a code sent to their smartphone, fingerprints, and so on.
5. Categorize your data and restrict access
Last but not least, it’s important to effectively categorize data so you can restrict it and protect it appropriately.
This starts with understanding what data you have. If you don’t, how are you going to protect it?
Data should be placed into different categories based on the type of data and just how sensitive and confidential it is.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll then be able to apply the appropriate data protection controls and you’ll be able to restrict access to those who need it.
One of the biggest issues is that too many people have access to confidential data when they don’t need it. This creates more risk, as there’s more potential for someone to make a mistake and misuse data. Instead, restrict access to those who require it.
Keep your customer’s data secure and secure your business’s future
It’s clear to see that there’s no magic formula when it comes to consumer data privacy. You need to use a number of different strategies and approaches to keep your customer’s data safeguarded.
Start off by implementing the tips and suggestions we’ve mentioned above, and you’ll go a long way to achieving exceptional levels of data privacy. However, you should never simply address privacy once and then forget about it. You need to continually reassess and tweak your strategy to ensure your customer’s personal information is safe.
