Protecting your customer’s data has never been as important as it is today. With so much data online, it’s a big target for hackers, which is why you want to make you are doing your best to protect it. There are many ways in which you can protect your customer’s data, from limiting access to it, updating your systems, using a password management tool, and so on.
Below we look into four ways to protect your customer’s data.
Limit Access To Data
When it comes to looking after your customer’s data, how many people in your company actually need access to it? Instead of allowing everyone in your marketing team to have access and having multiple accounts, why not limit it to just one or two people? After all, do your PR team need access to the same information as your email marketing team?
By reducing the number of people who have access to the data, you reduce the number of potential security risks. For example, if you have 15 accounts to access your email campaign data, that’s 15 different accounts with passwords and usernames that a potential hacker could target.
Make Sure Your System Is Fully Updated
As soon as an update is available for your system, implement it! System updates are released to patch up any security flaws that may have occurred in the old system. The longer you don’t update your system, the more updates that are released, and the more likely your system can be compromised. Hackers will deliberately target systems that haven’t been updated allowing them access to your customer’s data. Having anti-virus, anti-malware, and anti-spyware software in place will be your first line of defense. If you are looking to protect your own data you could look into self-sovereign identity software.
Use Password Management Tools
When it comes to protecting your customer’s data, one of the most common ways hackers try to attack you is by finding vulnerabilities within the passwords your employees use. Simple passwords that can be easily guessed are an easy way for someone to gain access to your network. This is why it’s important to use password management tools to make sure your passwords are secure. A good practice is to use two-factor authentication, have a password difficulty rating, fingerprint to log in and require passwords to be changed every two months. It could be useful to implement a password policy into your company handbook.
Only collect important data
The more data you collect on a customer, the more valuable it is to others and the more of a target you become for potential hackers. By only collecting important information, hackers are less likely to see you as a target as it’s less valuable to them. For example, if all you collect is email addresses, a hacker is going to find that a lot less useful than if you collect email addresses, income, address, phone number, job title, etc. So try not to collect information that isn’t actually needed for yourself.
Protecting customer data is vital to your business which is why it’s so important that you take it seriously. Above are just four ways to help protect your customer’s data but with some research, you’ll see there are many other ways.
What do you do to protect your customer’s data? Is there anything you would like to add to the above? Do you use any of the methods above? Let us know in the comment box below.
Lisa has a Bachelor’s of Science in Communication Arts. She is an experienced blogger who enjoys researching interesting facts, ideas, products, and other compelling concepts. In addition to writing, she likes photography and Photoshop.