Managing a database is a big task that requires ample of manpower, resources and technology. However, if you’re maintaining a confidential database then you require one more thing called security. There have been cases where big organizations have lost their customer’s information to hackers, competitors and cybercriminals. Now that your customers provide their private information only after putting enough trust into you, losing such information may lead to disbelief or a file suit in worst case. If you’re a business entrepreneur who possesses a large data of different customers, you must ensure the customer data safety at priority.

What can go wrong?

One of the biggest fear is to lose your goodwill among your customers. Note that you’ve been provided with your customers’ personal information after they expressed explicit trust in you. If you lose their identity, they’ve all the reason to find your alternative, after filing a suit against you. However, if you focus on the area that may cause you to face this situation, you would they are very basic mistakes that everyone commits. This includes, sharing file to a cloud account with an intention to work from home, the file sharing link that works for entire team through a file-sharing service etc. According to a survey, it was found that nearly 58% of SMBs are using various public cloud-based services and application for their business accounts.

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If you’re considering yourself safe because you don’t use these modern techniques of cloud sharing and still work with conventional methods of accessing data on your personal devices, you’re at a higher risk. Most of the personal devices lack security, which later appears as a data breach. Most of the personal devices are used for your personal web-surfing an amusement, which may also include various app downloading and web-surfing. This habit surely brings a lot of infection, if the device has scarce of security resources. If you’re device has a malware, it may transmit your data to a different server without you knowing about it.

How to ensure safety of customers’ data?

Managing a vast database of your customers’ information not only takes strong security that extends to cloud services but also your internal measures of your business. Your policies must be clear and focused to keep the customer data to priority. Here, you may hire services of various security providers, but they may fail if you are internal policies aren’t strong enough towards data protection.

To ensure that you do not fail to pass-on the valuable customer data into wrong hands, you must know which employee has the access of which data and how it is being processed and used. You can make an explicit list of the resources that your employees use and a separate list of the online services that your establishment uses. If you find any service to be critical, it is important that you perform regular audits to ensure their reliability. Setting clear guidelines and spread awareness among employees and keep them on the same page for the data safety.

Must Read : How Hackers Work and How to Protect Yourself?

Overall, it is important that you take initiative to safeguard all the exits where you think the data may go out of the safe custody. This also includes business emails, cloud services etc. One of the reasons why the necessary steps must be taken is the possibility that in case the data is leaked and reaches to cybercriminals or even your competitors, it may be misused to any level. Also, if the data is lost from your custody, you would be held responsible for the same. Now that you understand the importance of customer data safety, go ahead and run a thorough scan to find any loophole and get it fixed. If you wish to share your opinion, do let us know in the comments below.