4 Steps For Safer Customer Data
These days, modern businesses face tough competition, and a higher number of standards required for surviving in the modern market. One of the increasingly prevalent talking points is being able to keep customer data secure. No one wants to deal with a business that they can’t trust, and keeping your customers’ personal information safe is more important than ever before. Here are a few effective tips for making sure your customer data stays safe…
Image: Wikimedia
Guard Yourself Against Remote Access
A large proportion of modern data breaches are rooted in remote access. With this in mind, business owners are being urged to ensure their end point security is up to scratch, and limit the possibility of outside remote access as much as possible. For many small businesses, this means an investment in greater mobile security to make their customer interactions safe and convenient. For example, customers can perform traditionally high-risk transactions quickly with identity verification services. Your financial resources may be pretty stretched as it is, but in the long run, investing in these extra layers can save you from a much more costly security breach.
Set Standards for Partners and Vendors
Software firms, email service providers, and various agencies that you may use, all need to have equal or better cyber security standards than your business. Let’s say you were using an automated marketing tool for campaign tracking and generation. You need to make sure that the company in question has IP address blocking in place, ensuring that only people within your firewall can access email addresses and other data. Before you allow any partners or other parties to access your customer data, make sure they’re well secured.
Switch to a Dedicated Server
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Looking to save money, a lot of fledgling businesses will use a shared server or cheap cloud solution to host all of their data. This means that they’re using a range of different programs, sites and scripts all running on a single machine, and also that individuals besides your trusted employees will have access to the server. Obviously, you don’t want your business’s website to be at risk due to another company’s poor security, so don’t put your data at risk for the sake of saving a few dollars. While dedicated servers are much more expensive, they’ll also reduce or even eliminate the chance of your sensitive customer information being hacked by a cybercriminal.
Send in the Lawyers
If and when a cybersecurity breach does occur, your business’s reputation, not to mention millions of its capital, could be at risk. Obviously, your customers will want some kind of guarantees as to what you’ll do in the event of their data being leaked or stolen. The same goes for your partners and vendors who entrust sensitive info to you. Talk to some lawyers who have experience with cybersecurity matters, and have them draft the appropriate contracts relating to your website, customer documentation and contracts with vendors.
Take these steps, and your customer data will stay safe and sound!
