7 Tips for Businesses to Ensure Privacy Remains a Priority
By Chet Wisniewski’s, Sophos’ Senior Security Advisor
- Have human resources talk about the steps they take to protect your employees’ information.
- Remind your staff that your customers depend on them to protect their information, no differently than they depend on HR to protect their sensitive and private details.
- If you collect it, protect it! If you aren’t sure if the information is private, treat it with the same seriousness you would any other private data. Better yet, don’t collect unnecessary data. Crooks can’t steal what you don’t have.
- Use your respect of customer privacy to your advantage by pointing out precisely what data you are collecting, what you plan to do with it and how long you are going to retain it. Don’t use legalese, stick to plain spoken descriptions. People will feel far more confident in your brand for being upfront and honest.
- Ensure that passwords are never shared and are strong and unique. This not only makes data harder to steal, but provides accountability against abuse of privilege that can infringe privacy.
- There is no better way to show you care than by using encryption to shield data from thieves and prying eyes. It can even satisfy the most discerning regulators that you’ve done all you can to protect your customers.
- Don’t give employees access to data they don’t need to do their day job.
For more on keeping your data safe, check Naked Security by Sophos.
