Data protection - the key to customer’s confidence

What do you think encourages customer’s confidence in an organization? Is it just excellent services and authentic information?

These are important from a business perspective, however, in the digitalized era are not sufficient enough to enhance your confidence in customers.

Every now and then, we are learning about the cases of data breaches across the globe. A survey by FORBES in 2018 gave a statistics that US businesses and government agencies have suffered $668 million security intrusions and data breaches. This is the reason why less than 20 percent of customers have complete faith in their organizations pertaining to the data safety. In practical terms, no industry is completely safe from data breaches, but that doesn't even mean that organizations have no power to protect them. By incorporating practical measures data security could be tightened or safeguarded. Here are a few measures an organization can take to guard customer data and win their confidence:

Encrypt sensitive information- Various industrial regulations demand some specific data to be encrypted. But organizations wouldn't mind safeguarding other types of data too, not then when almost everything could be encrypted. A few resources such as the user names, details, email, SMS, etc. Even some sensitive data such as the intellectual property and personal records of both customers and employees need to be encrypted. But, before taking a further step, you should ensure that storing these types of data shouldn't cause financial and reputational damage to the firm, in case it is manipulated. Encryption isn't 100% safe, but will ensure trust in your customers that the firm takes data breaches sincerely. 

Optimize backup and recovery- Data breaches do not come up with a notice, some can even go undetected for days, weeks or even months. Hence, organizations need to keep a backup plan always ready by adhering on some sort of disaster recovery technology. Although, it's a complicated process but radical and purposely build technologies could easily help in resolving data to its original state and will also empower firms to bounce back rapidly even after a breach. 

Transparency- There's nothing more harmful from the business perspective then lying to your customers about their data or covering it from them. Be clear, transparent and fair as possible with your customers about data security and endpoint security efforts. Even if a failure drives to a breach, accept your blunder despite hiding or blaming on technology or other aspects and clarify how such mistakes could be prevented in the future. When it is about the customer's personal data they began to be more cautious and hold businesses more accountable. As customers these days are more aware of data security, hence ensuring them that their information is protected becomes more vital to an organization’s future growth.

Consider cyber insurance- A research by Ponemon, evaluated the total expense that organizations have to bear over cybercrimes averagely is $ 4 million in 2018, which is around 6.5 percent more than the previous year. This has prompted many business firms to invest in cyber insurances. Organizations generally opt for policies that cover reimbursable expenses. This includes monetary loss form business interruptions, legal expenses, regulatory penalties, crisis management costs, and more. Although, we hope you don't face any of those issues but having insurance helps in keeping a better peace of mind for both the businesses and customers and hence it’s worth the cost. 

Try communicating openly with customers- Explaining your customers the way their data would be used is an initial step to begin your communication with them. Clearly describe where the information would be stored and the way it would be handled. Avoid using complex data languages and easily explain them, and recognize a third party that might access this data. Outline the entire process from the beginning and update whenever any change in the terms and conditions has taken place. 

Evaluate your service providers- It isn't obvious that how determined you are about protecting your customer's data the same would your vender and partners be. Due to the inefficiency of your partner, if the data is compromised, it will reflect your business image. Hence, before signing a deal with any other firm make sure to observe whether they are as determined as you are in enforcing data security. By setting up high standards in data protection, you can easily rule the inefficient vendors.