It’s no secret that the number of online data breaches is increasing at a rapid rate. According to a new report from Risk Based Security, 2018 was the second most active year for online data breaches on record. Because of this, it is now more important than ever for businesses to take the necessary steps in order to make sure that all of their online data is secure. More specifically, businesses need to make sure that all of their customer’s data is secured.
If a customer finds out that their personal data has been hacked, and is now in the hands of a stranger, the likelihood of them continuing to be a customer of yours is very slim. Not being able to secure data gathered from your customers proves that you can not be trusted. This will result in them no longer doing business with you. Fortunately, many businesses understand this and work very hard at keeping all of their customer data secured. However, many of these same businesses do not know how to do this efficiently. In this article, we will be discussing three efficient ways in which businesses can protect their customer data.
Teach Your Employees
Teaching employees how to protect customer data is something that many business owners don’t do, but should be doing. If you are the only person who knows how to protect customer data in the company, then your customer data is at risk of being hacked when you are not around. By teaching your employees how to protect customer data, you are ensuring that there are no weak leaks in your company.
Here are some of the ways in which you can teach your employees how to protect customer data. You can train them to always log out of their computers at the end of the workday, always put sensitive papers in a secure location, never let anybody in the office that they do not know, and immediately report any suspicious activity to upper management. If you teach your employees to do all of these things, then you no longer need to worry about your customer data being at risk when you are not around.
In addition to teaching your employees how to properly protect customer data, you can also hold weekly meetings. In these weekly meetings, you can discuss steps everyone should take, and any new security measures that you would like to implement to ensure that your customer data is properly secured. During these weekly meetings, you can also double-check that your employees are actually doing what you taught them as well.
Collect as Little Data as Possible
The less data that you have, the easier it is to secure. In addition to being easier to secure, having less data also decreases the likelihood of the data being hacked at all. When hackers target databases, specifically customer databases, they typically go for the ones containing the most data. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. A hacker is not going to spend ample amounts of time trying to hack into customer databases that only have information on a few hundred people. They are far more likely to target customer databases that have information on hundreds of thousands of people.
In order to make sure that you have as little data as possible, only collect customer information that you absolutely need, and delete any data that you already have that you do not need. A good rule of thumb is to check the customer data that you have at least once a month in order to make sure that all of the customer data you have is valuable and worth something to you.
Keep Up With The Times
The third and final efficient way to protect your customer data is to keep up with the times. Make sure to keep up with all the latest technologies, security measures, and anything else that can impact data security. Just like everything else in the world, data security methods are constantly changing. One day you may wake up and learn that there is a better way to secure your customer data than what you are currently doing. That is why it is so important to understand that the world is constantly changing.
Because of this, you need to constantly be paying attention to any new developments that may arise in the data security field. If you do not pay attention, you run the risk of your data security methods becoming obsolete, and thus, increase the chances of your customer data being hacked.
In summary, it is important for all businesses to make sure that their data is secure. However, making sure that customer data is secure should be prioritized over any other type of data. This is because customers will no longer do business with you if they find that you are not securing their personal data to the best of your abilities. All you have to do is follow these three pieces of advice written in this article, and you will never have to worry about your customer data being hacked ever again.
