With the rise of data theft (and continually evolving ways to steal data), keeping your business secure in 2020 is a necessary investment in protecting your assets. Securing your business data also improves trust with your prospects and customers. With the new year rolling in, there’s no better time to evaluate your current data storage methods and implement needed improvements.

Evaluate Your Current Methods: How Do You Keep Business Data Secure? 

What are the current methods you use to keep business data secure? In addition to looking over your SOPs (standard operating procedures) and evaluating your Internet and cloud storage security, you should perform a physical walkthrough of your work environment while considering data security.

Here are some things to look for:

• Are employee computer stations unlocked? If so, could anyone access financial data and customer information?

• How are receipt copies and credit card slips stored? What about bills and other sensitive information that does not arrive electronically? Can anyone access it?

• At your large and small recycling areas, are there signs posted dictating what type of materials can be recycled? Secure materials shouldn’t go into regular recycling.

• Do you have documentation to direct people in your organization about what types of secure data should not remain exposed, as well as how to dispose of that printed material? 

Once you’ve done an evaluation, write up a report and educate your coworkers on how to properly store and dispose of sensitive materials. 

How Can You Secure Customer Data?

Securing customer data is important. In addition to liability concerns, your customers can lose faith in you following a data breach. Security is especially essential for businesses that rely on maintaining client credit card information for monthly or subscription-based billing purposes. Once gone, it’s hard if not impossible to regain that trust.

You can secure your customers’ data by ensuring it’s encrypted (and your encryption methods are current), limiting nonessential employee access to the information, and only collecting the information you absolutely need from your customers. 

Most importantly, be open with your customers about what you’re doing to keep their data safe and secure. They need to know that you are taking active steps to prevent a possible data breach/data theft.

How Do You Secure Data? With Internal Safeguards and Procedures

Having specific methods for data collection and storage can help. Create a procedure, train your employees on it, and ensure they have refresher training each quarter or fiscal year. Your employees should know what to do to secure data at all times.

Additionally, you should ensure a secure digital data backup regularly, digitize paper materials, and destroy records once you are no longer required to keep them.

Considering the expensive legal, ethical, and trust-related consequences of failing to secure data or failing to notify customers about how their data is used, it’s much wiser to invest in proper data securing methods before something bad happens — whether you have a completely online storefront, a brick-and-mortar business, a large corporation, or a mom-and-pop shop. Our entire Long Island business community benefits from secure business data, and it’s time for you to be a leader in customer data security.

Contact the experts at Storage Quarters today by calling (516) 794-7300 or via email at info@storagequarters.com regarding custom secure data solutions to protect your business and your customers’ data.