Your business depends on the security of your customer data. Customers trust you with sensitive data and they expect you to keep it secure. Cybercriminals will hack your systems, steal customer data, hold it for ransom or sell it. If you don’t protect your customer data, you can face many different consequences such as damage to your brand reputation, loss of customers, fines and lawsuits.
The law requires you to protect customer data
Today there are specific laws, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that require you to protect customer data. The GDPR requires companies who collect data from EU citizens to implement reasonable data protection measures.
Reincubate, a company that’s on a mission to help users make the most of their iOS devices and data by offering best-in-class apps, video and deeper access to data, emphasizes the importance of respecting the GDPR. The regulations have a wide scope and there are significant penalties for non-compliance.
Collect only essential data
If you only collect data that’s essential for your business, you will gain the confidence of consumers and decrease the external value of your data. The more data points you collect, the more valuable it becomes to hackers. If consumers feel you want too much data from them that they don’t think you really need, they may lose confidence in your business.
It’s important to regularly evaluate what data you collect or you can easily start to accumulate unnecessary data. Evaluate your website forms, mobile apps, analytic tools and in-store data collection if you have a physical store.
Limit access to data
Not all employees in a business need access to all types of data. By setting permissions and limiting access to data, you have fewer points of vulnerability. Each access point where an employee physically logs in to a data analytics tool creates another point of weakness.
Someone with a weak password can leave your whole system open to a brute-force attack. By limiting access of employees to the tools they need, it also makes it easier for you to cut off access to those tools if the employee decides to leave the business.
Use password management tools
You can help avoid the risk of cyberattacks if you require employees to use password management tools. These tools encrypt and store all passwords. When users want access to their passwords, the information is in the password manager. As the passwords are encrypted, they are unreadable to anyone without an encryption key.
Even if a hacker gains access to the password management tool, the passwords are unreadable. If an employee leaves your business, you can shut off access to the password management tool so they aren’t able to log in.
Develop a data management strategy
When you store bits of data in many different places, it not only makes data analysis more difficult but it creates more vulnerability, especially if data is stored in unsecured applications. If you lose track of where you store data, you may not even realize when you’ve been hacked.
It’s very important to develop a data management strategy so you don’t lose track of what customer data you collect and where you store it.
Assess the security of all your tools
The security of your customer data will depend on the tools you use. If a SaaS tool you’re using is not secure, customer data could be unsafe. Every time you add another tool to your technology stack, you must make sure it’s secure. Any tool you use should comply with either SOC 2 or ISO 27001, which requires continuous monitoring and updating of data security protocols.
