What Your Employees Should Know About Protecting Client Data
In the past, protecting client data meant making sure that the paper your company generated and collected in file cabinets was kept locked up safe from prying eyes. With the advent of the computer age, client security became more complex. The growth of the internet made this problem even worse. It is important to make your employees aware of the things they should do to protect client data, as well as the things that should not do.
Computer
It is vital for employees to understand the ease with which hackers can get into unprotected computers. This is why any company computers have to be fully protected by the best anti-virus software. All communications via email and file transfer have to be fully encrypted to prevent anyone else from accessing the data they contain.
Internet Security
One problem that many employers find themselves confronting is the possibility that some member of their staff might reveal private client information on the internet. An avenue these employees might use for this is one of the many social networking sites that have sprung up on the internet. The outcome for a lawyer, doctor or other professional with an employee that does this can be devastating.
The best way to handle this is to require that your staff sign non-disclosure agreements regarding anything they might learn about at work. You should also make very clear the serious consequences for their job and their financial future should they violate this agreement.
Privileged Discussions
Aside from computers and Internet, your employees might also make client data available to others simply by taking about it with others. Many businesses have a policy in place that makes it a violation of company rules to ever discuss the information of any customer with a non-employee. They should also avoid discussing this information with another employee in the hearing of a third person.
Protecting Physical Media
Another issue that employees should be made aware of is that of discarding materials that contain customer data. This may be obvious to them when it comes to printouts and other documents, which should be destroyed.
However, they also need to understand the need to make any digital media that might be discard unusable by erasure. It is also a good idea to physically crush discs and drives to ensure the data cannot be retrieved.
Handling of Data
Another problem that companies often face is that employees will sometime decide to take their work home with them. If they take privileged client data home, and lose it, this can have very unfortunate results. For this reason, the company should institute a checkout policy were the employees formally checkout any company property they take with them.
Peter Wendt is a writer and researcher specializing in security awareness programs . For readers who are interested in learning more about this subject, Peter recommends they check out this educational topic