As a business owner, it will be up to you to ensure your business is committed to cyber security. The last few years have been a challenge to some companies as they adjust to change, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Read this guide to learn more.
Importance Of Protecting Customer Data
You may or may not be aware of the recent cyber security laws brought into the UK in recent years. More recently, we had the GDPR regulations in 2018 change how businesses can use customers’ data.
As a business owner, you likely remember the drastic changes businesses had to make to meet these regulations, which led to permission requests for data and mass deletions. Not only is cyber security important for your business, but they have also become a legal requirement in some case. Find out why consumer data privacy matters to US consumers.
Set Security Standards
On the topic of getting customers back onto your side, it may benefit you to set expected security standards for your data management system and IT infrastructure in general. This can be achieved through an ISO 27001. This standard will show that your business is aware of the concerns in the cyber world and that you have put steps in place to protect the business from future concerns.
A security standard helps reassure your customers that you are indeed looking after their data and have a clear-cut policy in place. It can be challenging to know where to start with creating your own ISO 27001 policy, which is why there are experts out there who can break down the steps and even provide templates for you to use.
You should contact organisations such as High Table, who can provide you with the complete guide to ISO 27001. They can help you meet the standard requirements through audits and completed documentation. Experts like this specialise in all things ISO 27001, meaning you can learn more about writing ISO 27001 ISMS documents and more about cyber security in general. It’s worth always looking at your security standard and ensuring that you continuously monitor these processes and upgrade when possible, preferably as early as you can.
Using an ISO 27001 as a standard, you should create yourself a cyber security strategy. This strategy should encompass a range of issues, either one you’ve experienced before or ones that are prevalent within your industry. This strategy should help you record and document a range of issues in the cyber world. A large part of this will relate to the data privacy, which is one of the main reasons recent GDPR regulations were brought in.
Use Password Management Tools
When it comes to protecting the integrity of your IT systems, both from the point of view of employees and customers, it will benefit you to secure the password stage. Typically, the access point, which is also known as the login point, will be one of the most vulnerable parts of cyber security. If a hacker manages to get in here, then they could access all the data they want, especially if you haven’t restricted them further.
For this reason, it may be beneficial for you to use password management tools. These password management tools can help your team to create and store complex passwords. This still means they will have their own password; it will just be linked only to the business and created out of their hands.
Some password management tools will also create new passwords regularly, following complex encryption codes, to keep them unique. Some of these encrypted sites will make the password unreadable to anyone who tries to access them without a specific encryption key.
This means that in the worst case that your employees’ password management tool is hacked, they still won’t be able to see any passwords without the unique personal key. This puts more gates and blockages in front of hackers and ensures that your employees are following the guidelines. As long as your employees are trained on your cyber security protocols, you should be able to keep everything protected. You can always enrol yourself and your employees onto cyber security courses to boost all of your knowledge.
Communicate Regularly
On the subject of working with your employees to boost your cyber security policies, it will also be a good idea for you to communicate with them about any incoming changes. More than that, you should communicate with your customer base too, as if they don’t hear from you, they may not trust you.
Open communication should be common place within your business. This will be especially true if your customers have any issues with the way you have operated your cyber security before. Regaining this reputation should be a priority for your business, but you will need to prove that you are worthy of changing. To navigate this process effectively and restore trust, consider hiring online reputation experts at Internet Reputation.
It may not even be your reputation directly that was damaged. It could have been that a competitor in the industry was hacked. If they lost data, it could prove to customers within the industry that it’s not a safe place to be. It will be up to you to write ISO 27001 documents and the like, to prove you care about data privacy and cyber security.
