To protect customer data, customer service agents should be able to understand and employ several data privacy best practices.

Every employee within an organization is responsible for ensuring customer data remains secure and for maintaining trust. Whether cybersecurity teams employ role-based access to data or CX teams place limits on the amount and types of data they collect, every department can do their part. Frequent privacy training for employees can also help maintain customer data privacy within organizations.

How to secure your customer data:

1. Adopt a data governance strategy

Data governance strategies can help organizations manage information across departments.  The Strategy should align with the organization’s overarching objectives and growth plans, so the leadership teams must approve it before implementation. Further, data governance provides guidance and removes the guesswork for customer data management.

2. Increase security with MFA

Streaming applications can offer multi-factor authentication or MFA as an additional security layer to protect subscribers’ data. They can minimize the risk of data theft by mandating customers to enter an instant OTP or open a link.

3. Ensure Compliance and privacy managemen are meet:

An identity management solution ensures that international data governance policies are met. Additionally, it takes care of real-time fraud analysis to prevent stubborn hacking attempts.

4. Single Sign-On: SSO or Single Sign-on allows a unified login system where a single set of login credentials can be used to access multiple partners.

5. Use to Encrypt data and protect customer data in transit

Data should be held secure ways. So this includes encrypting data when not in use and storing it as encrypted files in a password-protected environment. If data is stolen or lost, the fact it is encrypted will prevent it being accessed. Data is at higher risk when shuttled from one system to another, such as when customers pay by credit card on your website. Protect your website by installing a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate and ensuring your website uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) to encrypt all data.

6. Limit access to data

Employees should have access to customer information based on their roles and connection to the data. Organizations can base these permissions on each role’s intended purpose. For example, marketing teams may need demographic data, while customer service teams may need customers’ account information. This approach also means that as team members’ needs change — for example, if someone switches to a role with different access requirements — their permissions should change to what is necessary for the job.

Different types of permissions include the following:

• Full control. The user can take ownership of the data, including storage, access, modifications, data deletion and assigning permissions.
• Modify. The user can access, modify and delete data.
• Access. The user can access data but cannot modify or delete it.
• Access and modify. The user can access and modify data but cannot delete it.

8. An the last you need to Educate employees

Employees can be the weakest link in protecting customer data. Staff who handle customer information must be kept up-to-date on how to avoid information accidentally landing in the wrong hands. Provide training on how to spot email phishing scams to prevent employees accidentally installing a virus or sharing passwords with a hacker.

Train staff about GDPR requirements, and limit personal technology use such as mobile phones that include cameras near computers with access to sensitive customer data. Make sure your business has installed and maintains up-to-date security software. Get staff to regularly change their passwords.