Protecting customer data is important. The success of your business depends on it. Cybercriminals are bringing in annual revenues in trillions of dollars. They are motivated to do everything they can to get access to your business and user data. They steal data, ransom data, and often resell data. Since cybercrime is not going anywhere anytime soon, it is more important now than ever to protect your customer data.

It Is Your Job to Keep Your Customer Data Safe

You may think that as a marketer, you don’t need to worry about customer data or that it is not your job to worry about protecting customer data. Nothing could be farther from reality.

Marketers have massive control over customer data. Addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses are customer data that need to be protected. Any data you can collect from your customers is something that cybercriminals will want to steal from you. That is why it is your responsibility to take extra steps to protect customer data. This means that you need to have the right tools in place.

If your company does not protect user data, you will become vulnerable to cybercriminals. This can lead to loss of customer confidence, lawsuits, fines, and more. However, tools like Siem can help you protect your user's data. This is a great choice as SIEM security information and event management combine security information management with security event management.

At its most basic level, the software evaluates user and entity behavior analytics to secure related events from end-user devices, network equipment, and servers. It takes advantage of snort-like rules to detect malicious traffic on a client’s network or enterprise data asset. This makes it harder for nefarious individuals to get access to your networks and steal valuable data. However, using the right software tool is just one part of the scenario.

Cybercriminals Can’t Steal What You Do Not Have

If you do not have user data, cybercriminals cannot steal it from you. You can protect yourself and your users by only collecting data vital to your marketing efforts. This will minimize the value of the data you have stored while simultaneously boosting customer confidence.

Hackers are after any data they can get their hands on. They also want a decent return on the time and energy they invest in stealing data. They are less likely to steal low-value data. If the only user data you have is a list of email addresses, hackers might not put forth the effort.

Conversely, if you have names, location data, financial data, phone numbers, household income, etc., the value of your data grows. The more data points your company collects, the more enticing your data becomes to cybercriminals.

Control Access to Data

Not everyone on your team needs to have the same access to the data you collect. For example, in a marketing scenario, do your copywriters need access to the same information your marketing team has? Of course not.

The more you can limit access to user data, the fewer points of vulnerability the organization has. Every time a person logs in to get access to data, they create a new point of weakness. For example, if you have 50 user accounts that access your website, the chances are that at least one of those user accounts has a weak password. With just one weak password, your entire system and all of the user information stored on your system are open to attack.

Strong Passwords Are a Must

As mentioned above, login points are always vulnerable. You can strengthen cybersecurity and minimize hacking risk by requiring your employees to use password management tools.

The nice thing about password management tools is that they create complex passwords and encrypt and store each password. If someone needs to log in using a login tool, they can pull the information quickly from the password manager. Since the password is encrypted, it is impossible for anyone without the encryption key to use. If someone breaks into your password management tool, all the passwords are safe because the hackers cannot read them.

Conclusion

Protecting user data is essential to the survival of your business. Users trust you with sensitive data from Social Security information to credit card numbers. It is your responsibility to keep user data secure.