The increasing number of data breaches is raising security concerns among customers. While making an online transaction, many hesitate to share their personal information and want maximum protection. Data security is an easy task for large business groups as they can hire IT professionals, while small businesses cannot allocate a large portion of their budget on an IT team. Consequently, these small businesses may lose trust among their reliable customers.

Small business owners must understand the importance of customer data and analytics. If used correctly, data can be used to understand the market and evaluate customer’s needs. A Data-orientated approach is the way forward, and many companies even rely on it. Therefore, it is essential for businesses to acquire maximum data and generate accurate insight to survive in the market. However you need to know how to secure that data.

Steps to Secure Your Customer Data

Here are some effective ways to protect your customer data that you can utilize for business growth. Implementing these security measures will help you retain more customers and ensure a safe working environment.

1. Installing the right security tools such as anti-virus and anti-malware will work as the first line of defense. This software will block and identify many of the threats to your system
2. Updating your software and tools is essential, as many are also security updates. These updates not only apply to your security tools, but all applications that you use on your office systems. Developers consistently release new updates to deal with new types of threats.
3. Purchasing a secure and private server for your employees will lower the risk of a data breach. Using a shared server can leave you open to hackers.
4. Consistently backing up your files and securing those files in a safe place will protect you in case of ransomware.
5. Encryption helps you safeguard customer information by encoding sensitive data making it unreadable. Even if cyber criminals breach your system and try to steal your data, they would not be able to utilize it without decoding it.
6. Securing your systems with strong passwords should be mandatory. Furthermore, employees should change their passwords on a weekly or monthly schedule.
7. If your business obtains credit card or health insurance information from customers, you will need specialized protection. Your business should be compliant with appropriate laws and regulations, like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), etc.
8. It is important to discard and wipe unnecessary data after each transaction to lower potential liability in case of a data breach.

When it comes to protecting your customers data it is essential to remember that implementing every business process needs proper and accurate planning. Planning will make your tasks easy to execute.
If you are looking for proven IT security consultants in Detroit that can help create a plan for your business, contact us today!