The following are 9 ways to better protect sensitive data and encourage trust from customers.
1. Be sure that your privacy policy includes an accurate explanation of how customer data is used by your company.
Trust plays a critical role in increasing consumers’ willingness to share their personal data with businesses. However, according to an HBR study, social media sites have a tendency to get one of the lowest trust ratings from consumers.
Misleading customers about the way their data is collected, stored, protected and used can create reputation and legal issues for your business.
Trade bodies and government agencies have tightened up how they deal with organizations that have deceptive statements contained in their privacy policies – so do not get caught doing this. Double or even triple check our privacy policy to make sure all of its information is up-to-date and accurate.
What will happen if you don’t? Snapchat has been one of the victims of the new regulatory crackdown. It was found that the company deceived users regarding personal data, including information being collected off of iPhone contact lists and using slack security measures that resulted in users being exposed to security breaches.
Snapchat was not fined. However, the company was forced to comply with several obligations, which included getting a comprehensive privacy program implemented that an independent body will be monitoring for 20 years.
2. Stay Updated
Numerous organizations delay patching and update software until quieter times, however that may increase the risk of having an attack occur in the interim.
With a whole market dedicated to selling those exploits, there are hackers who constantly seek out and discover new ways of exploiting security vulnerabilities.
It costs money and may divert resources to do updates, however the security benefits that come with making even minor updates tend to outweigh any potential drawbacks.
3. Encrypt user data
It might seem like a no-brainer to encrypt sensitive data, however with fewer than half of business stating that they do this, it is a major weakness still.
Payment providers such as MasterCard and Visa require that retailers encrypt card details during transactions by default.
However, if the those details are stored on a company’s servers – for example, when a user’s payment details are remembered by a website – then unless robust industry security is protecting the information along with the most recent encryption technologies, then the risk is much higher.
It isn’t only payment cards that need to encrypted however – any personal information being stolen from your servers would not have as serious of an impact if the data was encrypted so that it was unreadable to hackers who gained access to it.
You should use the best VPN and tools you can afford. When effective encryption tools are not used it increases the chances exponentially that your customers’ information will fall into the wrong hands.
4. Be transparent regarding how you use customer data
Customers are often hesitant when it comes to sharing their personal information with businesses, and that is mainly due to the lack of transparency that exists between customers and businesses regarding the way their data gets used. Transparency might seem to be against more traditional business practices, however it can deepen brand loyalty and provide real value to services and products.
One good case study to take a look at what the benefits are in involving customers and being transparent is Domino’s Pizza. In 2008 the company surveyed their customers regarding what things they liked about their pizzas and what they didn’t like about them. Then this data was shared by Domino’s – including negative responses – in order to receive feedback from the general public. The feedback process helped the company improve its recipes as well as its financial position. The share price of Domino’s was $7.73 in 2009 and is now $108.
When you are transparent about the way you use information, it allows customers to see the bigger picture and subscribe to it, especially when it adds value to the interactions they have with your brand.
5. Don’t store, verify
With businesses being affected by security breaches regularly, it is very important that you make the distinction between collecting data you really need (names and addresses) from data you do not need (stored details from credit cards).
Other than providing customers with convenience, there isn’t any compelling reason for business to store the data – especially when there are such high risks associated with them.
It is much safer to create a framework that allows credit card information to be handled by third party processors. Their priority is to have the strictest security procedures instituted for storing sensitive data.
6. Minimize how available your data is
As remote working has increased, IT departments have been struggling to respond to all of the increased security risks that come with the increasing number of devices going into and out of company infrastructures. There is fairly inexpensive software that is available for helping to integrate devices with IT infrastructure, which provides tools for encrypting emails and additional layers of security for login process, however they are frequently resource intensive and time-consuming to deploy.
Although those tools might be useful in helping to prevent unwarranted attacks, unfortunately they don’t get to the problem’s root cause – which is employees along with their unpredictable human behavior.
Training staff about your company’s data protection policies is the best way of minimizing risk to your data in addition to the industry’s wider legal procedures. You need to educate your employees on best practices whenever sensitive customer information is being dealt with so that that know which steps should be taken to make sure that the wrong hands don’t get a hold of classified data.
7. Test for vulnerabilities
It isn’t enough any longer to just have the bare minimum of security standards covered and then hopes these measures will be sufficient for keeping customer data protected.
Businesses, and in particular e-commerce sites, need their sites to be tested regularly in order to discover any vulnerabilities that might not be picked up by the current security tools they are suing. That might include hiring ethical hackers or cybersecurity experts to identify any code vulnerabilities and undergo daily scanning to make sure that there isn’t any malware on the site, or investing in advanced security apps.
8. Be prepared for the worst
Does your company have a disaster recovery plan instituted? If not, then you should seriously consider getting one created.
If you have one already, are specific contingencies included for cyber attacks?
Typically a majority of organizations that have disaster recovery plans are for preparing for natural disasters, data center downtime or human error, but cyber attacks are overlooked by many.
Having safeguards in place is very important to ensure that, in case there is a cyber attack, that daily business functions may continue with minimal to no disruption.
In recent years hackers have targeted and also crippled the Sony PlayStation Network along with its movie studio division. This has cost million of dollars to the brand along with extensive reputational damage. These attacks were both unanticipated, however businesses can learn now from this Sony experience and get contingency plans created in order to prepare for these kinds of attacks.
Cyber attack scenarios need to be added to the disaster plans of companies and provisions should be include for communicating with employees and customers, in addition to having workarounds for distributing data in case the regular infrastructure is compromised.
9. Use your common sense
Despite all of the increased sophistication for protecting against attacks that target sensitive and valuable customers, maybe the best weapon is actually common sense diligence. There is no amount of technology advancement that can protect companies from human error and oversight.
From ensuring that passwords get changed regularly to training employees to not send sensitive information via email, it definitely makes sense that the necessary resources and time be invested in order to keep sensitive customer data protect and also to create a culture that has a collective responsibility for this information.
