For your company to carry out legal and reputable business practices, you need to prioritize the handling, storing, and disposal of sensitive customer information. Whether it’s their name, home address, credit card information, or all of the above, a customer should be able to trust your company with it. These tips for keeping customer data secure will help you prevent damaging data breaches from happening right under your nose.
Keep Sensitive Data on a Need-to-Know Basis
Businesses need to keep customer information in a secure area, whether it’s keeping digital records under password protection or keeping physical records under lock-and-key. The only employees in your company who should have access to this data are the ones who need it to complete their daily tasks. This is why it’s also important that, when you hire employees to handle such data, you run thorough background checks on them to ensure they can deliver the level of trust and professionalism that handling sensitive customer data requires.
Put Strong Cybersecurity in Place
In order to keep hackers away from digital data, you need to put the right forms of cybersecurity in place. This, of course, includes strong password protection and data encryption, but beyond those, the best methods of keeping data secure are with the help of firewalls and antivirus software. This will help keep your computers safe for data storage instead of transforming it into a buffet for hackers. Although these virtual roadblocks will keep unwanted parties away from your sensitive data, they can only do this if you stay on top of periodic updates.
Regularly Update Your Cybersecurity
One of the easiest and most important tips for keeping customer data secure is installing updates when necessary. If you see that an antivirus software needs an update, but you choose to ignore it, you run the risk of making the company network ill-prepared for a cyberattack. In fact, stay on top of computer updates in general because many of them can include updates that will keep your cybersecurity performing at the level of quality that your company and customers deserve.
Don’t Ignore Physical Data
When a business can no longer legally retain physical information, they need to use a professional shredding company to dispose of it. Don’t try to skip this step so that you can use a personal shredder instead because that will make the data even more susceptible to theft. Take your time, and learn how to choose a shredding service in order to ensure you find a reliable company that will securely destroy your documents with ease. That way, once you can no longer retain physical records, you don’t have to worry about them ending up in the wrong hands and causing a data breach.
|
|
