It’s no secret that online data breaches are increasing rapidly. According to a new report from Risk Based Security 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 to ensure their online data is secure. More specifically, businesses must secure all of their customers’ data.
Protecting the Data You Gather from Customers
If a customer finds out that their 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 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 to secure all their customer data. However, many businesses do not know how to do this efficiently. This article will discuss three efficient ways 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 ways to teach your employees how to protect customer data. For example, 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 these things, 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 protect customer data properly, you can also hold weekly meetings. In these weekly meetings, you can discuss steps everyone should take and any new security measures you would like to implement to ensure your customer data is properly secured. In addition, during these weekly meetings, you can double-check that your employees are doing what you taught them.
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. When hackers target customer databases, they typically go for the ones containing the most data. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. A hacker will not spend ample time trying to hack into customer databases with only information on a few hundred people. They are far more likely to target customer databases that have information on hundreds of thousands of people.
To ensure that you have as little data as possible, only collect the customer information you need, and delete any data you already have that you do not need. A good rule of thumb is to check your customer data at least once a month to ensure that all of your customer data 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. 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. Again, it is important to understand that the world is constantly changing.
Because of this, you must constantly pay 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, increasing the chances of your customer data being hacked.
In summary
All businesses need to ensure their data is secure. However, securing customer data should be prioritized over other data types. Customers will no longer do business with you if you are not securing their data to the best of your abilities. All you have to do is follow these three pieces of advice in this article, and you will never have to worry about your customer data ever being hacked.
