Are You Treating Sensitive Data with the Care It Deserves?

There is so much sensitive data flying around the digital world, whether it belongs to your customers, your employees, or you, there’s a lot of pressure to stay on top of it. Data leaks do happen, and when they do, people start looking around for someone to blame. While a lot of the time, there is an attack or a hacker that led to this in the first place, many people might take that for granted. Instead, the blame might land at the feet of the business that wasn’t treating the data with the care that it should have.

Making Your Customers Aware

The idea of data being used is nothing new, and it’s something that many customers even completely expect. At the same time, though, that’s not something that you can take for granted. Whenever a customer finds themselves in a situation with your brand where they have to fill out a form or complete something in order to procure your services, you should be clear about what this data is going to be used for, how long you’re going to keep it, and what you’re going to do to keep it safe.

Even in a time when consumer trust in businesses might generally be low, you can try and be as transparent as possible (as long as you stick to your word) so that a perception can be built of your brand as different from the rest.

Under Lock and Key

Many people might not have many strong feelings about whether your business decides to use their data, so long as it’s kept safe. That’s the all-important aspect to consider, however, and if there’s a leak of customer data, then you might find yourself in a very vulnerable position that’s difficult to come back from. At that point, customers might feel as though you aren’t able to keep their data safe, meaning that you can’t be trusted.

Investing in proper security that can take your own working considerations into account can help to ensure that you’re limiting how exposed this sensitive data is. Options like SASE security can make use of secure access points to achieve this and can add a layer of conviction to your claims about your brand being a safe home for this data.

What It’s Used For

There is a general suspicion among many audiences about how businesses use their data. It’s something that people might feel powerless about. Not only do they not really have any control over whether or not businesses take their data, but they also don’t really know what it’s used for. It’s something that businesses can often wash their hands of by offering customers that ‘choice’,  a form that allows them to either accept all of your cookies or customize which they cancel, only for that process to be too time-consuming to consider. Being upfront about this and being more straightforward in the choice that you offer, including offering a ‘reject all’ button, can help people to feel more confident in your brand.