When you don’t make your customer’s data security a priority your business can take a nosedive. Here’s 3 reasons why customer data should be safeguarded.
Consumer personal information is the gold mine in our digital world. Data fuels everything. While businesses that gather this data and process it are becoming powerful and valuable by the day, it has become apparent that the biggest brands become vulnerable when they violate the trust of their customers.
As more tech businesses are coming up, there is a need to strategize on how data security and consumer privacy are going to become a priority for companies in this global economy that is continuously growing. Ideally, consumers now know that companies collect their information and use it to deliver personalized services. Consumers accept this kind of delivery as long as it makes life easier for them. But when trust is breached, this agreement takes a different turn.
When you do not check the safeguards of the customer data, your business can take a nosedive. To give you a snapshot of what awaits lack of customer data security, you will lose billions in market value, your reputation will be downgraded, the courts will be on your case, and industry regulators will knock at your door for a long time.
There are reasons as to why customer data should be handled correctly; we are going to look at 3 reasons.
It helps when you become proactive to data protection
New regulations are being rolled out by governments around the world to secure the use and storage of data of its citizens. The latest enforcement of data protection has been Europe’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). In November, we are going to see Canada enforcing the Mandatory Data Breach Notification requirement that requires organizations who fall victim to data breach to report the case to Canada’s Privacy Commissioner.
If you do not take action to protect your customer data, you will not be saved with any words you say after the data breach. If you protect your data using systems like Gartner MDM, you will protect your customer data and also protect yourself from both legal and brand impacts.
It helps you to know who you are doing business with
Cybersecurity is a very important priority in our business today because of the risk of a data breach that has dominated the conversation of data privacy. If you happen to transfer your information to a third party application, it is up to you to ensure that the data is secure. You have to verify because if anything goes wrong, you will be the one who is liable.
The business environment is busy, and there are all sorts of new vendors who offer a solution to improve either your services or provide a cheaper alternative that compliments your business processes. Before you engage further with the other party, ensure that you do a thorough background check on them, and look for referrals. In some circumstance, ensure you audit their office locations.
Protect your brand
For the worst scenario, you need to come up with a communication strategy that complements the response plan. If not, you will have a disjointed, delayed, and inconsistent response to a crisis. You need to have a structure of how you are going to communicate with your stakeholders. This will help you to avoid decision making in real time, as well as help you limit coming up with inappropriate responses. Finally, you need to run a simulation of a cybersecurity attack even on data security systems like the Gartner MDM to help you identify gaps and flaws in your process of handling the matter, and prepare yourself when the situation comes up.
Remember that if you suffer data loss, it is important to tell your customers what you have done to counter the loss and what you are going to do henceforth. In the worst possible situation, it is important to demonstrate that you have already taken the necessary steps to keep customer data safe.
Author Bio: Adrian Rubin is a freelance writer and climate change advocate.
