Data security is something you can’t skimp on these days. There are countless threats on the internet that can cause problems for your business. It pays to invest early in cybersecurity best practices to protect your data when it takes half a year to detect a data breach.
It’s on you to keep your customer data safe if you want people to trust your company. Keep the five things below in mind to build a customer data security system that works.
1. Access Management
Controlling who can access customer data is one of the biggest parts of keeping it safe. Even if you have a robust security system, it only takes one mistake from an employee to compromise your information.
If you want to minimize damage when that happens, make sure your employees only have access to the files they need. You only have exposure for a limited data set when you do this.
2. Encrypt Your Data
It makes sense to use unencrypted data when looking at something. Most people don’t understand encryption protocols, so you need to unencrypt your files when needed.
However, that should be the only time your information is in that state. If your data is at rest, make sure to add encryption. Doing this means nobody with access to your server can read your customer data.
3. Work on Secure Connection
Even if your customer data gets encrypted in transit, that doesn’t mean you should take things easy. You still don’t want the possibility of intruders intercepting information in transit.
Make sure you encrypt all communication that involves customer data. That means using HTTPS on websites and using encrypted VPN tunnels when sending data throughout your company.
If you want to add security to email, use the encryption feature in your email software.
4. Wipe Old Hardware
There will come a time when you need to update your storage devices. While modern drives last a long time, they won’t stick around forever.
The question is, what do you do with the data on those drives? It isn’t enough to simply delete the files. Anyone with good computer skills can recover the files.
It’s smarter to do a complete drive erasure. Find a company that offers certified destruction to make sure all old data is removed from your old hard drives.
5. Keep Your Systems Updated
One big thing many people fail to do on computer systems keeping them updated. It’s tempting to hold off updates since you don’t know what problems new software versions will cause. However, that doesn’t mean you should wait too long.
Set up test systems to try new software updates as soon as possible. Doing this will let you find any potential issues and resolve them before rolling out updates to your computer systems.
Don’t Underestimate the Importance of a Customer Data Protection System
With how much cybercrime happens these days, it’s a mistake not to take the right security precautions. It’s on you to keep your customer data safe. If you don’t create a customer data protection program, you risk taking a considerable reputation risk and not following security regulations set out in your industry.
Do you want to learn more tech tips that will help you manage your business and customer data security? Check out the blog for more ideas that will help.
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