There are countless ways to improve your business, but maintaining a strong feeling of trust with your customers is critical. Most people are aware of all the cybersecurity breaches that happen regularly, and each incident creates a loss of trust in the companies that get hit.
If this happens to your business, restoring customer trust will be a challenge. However, you can prevent this by protecting the data you manage.
1. Understand the consequences of broken trust
When your goal is to build trust through data security, it’s important to understand how the two are connected and what the consequences are for broken trust. As Box explains, cloud security protects data and business content, like customer orders, secret design documents, and financial records. When this kind of data gets leaked or stolen, there is a lot at stake for your customers.
Even the smallest bits of exposed data can harm a company. For example, proprietary information can cause them to lose their competitive edge, and personal information can give hackers what they need for identity theft.
2. Take full responsibility from the start
Your customers trust you automatically just by doing business with you. Thanks to busy schedules, many people will blindly trust you, and that’s a big responsibility to carry. In this situation, customers are basically giving you trust that you haven’t yet earned. When you break unearned trust, it’s harder to regain because you don’t have an established history of falling back on. You can’t just say, “this was an accident,” because your customers don’t know any better. All they know is the violation.
The only way to prevent incidents that violate your customer’s trust is to take all the proper precautions from the start. Secure all of your data completely, so nothing is left to chance.
Here are some basic data security measures to implement:
- Encryption. The number one protection against data theft and leaks is encryption. If you store sensitive data in the cloud, for example, it needs to be encrypted while it’s stored in your account. Encryption won’t prevent data from being exposed or stolen, but it makes data unreadable to anyone who doesn’t have the decryption key.
- Access control. It’s critical to control access to company data. Each employee and contractor should have their own user account to access sensitive data and this should only be granted as needed. Each account should also be restricted as much as possible so that users can only access the bare minimum required to fulfill their duties.
- Use multi–factor authentication. When it comes to logging into accounts, set up MFA as often as possible. This will prevent unauthorized access, such as when a user’s login details get stolen. With MFA enabled, stolen, valid credentials aren’t enough to log into the account.
- Data security policies. Your data security is only as strong as your policy enforcement. Don’t let any violations slip through the cracks or people will get the impression that you’ll let them slide. It only takes a small mistake to expose sensitive data, and you can’t afford to let that happen.
- Require the use of a VPN. When you require employees and contractors to connect to your company network and accounts through a VPN, their traffic will be encrypted. This helps when people work remotely from coffee shops or other public spaces with Wi-Fi connections that are easily spoofed or hijacked.
3. Vet your third-party applications
Vet your vendors before choosing any third-party applications to store or manage sensitive data. Make sure their security measures are up to par with industry standards. It’s not enough to simply read descriptions of their security. Hire a professional to analyze each application you’re seriously considering working with. If a vendor doesn’t comply with data privacy laws, find another company.
Hire a professional data security professional
Don’t risk losing customer trust by winging your data security. Consult with a professional IT security provider to develop a plan specifically for your business. Developing trust is a requirement when you’re dealing with sensitive data. If you want your business to thrive, your customers need to be absolutely certain they can trust you with their information.
