The pandemic’s shift in lifestyle has brought almost everyone’s work-life out of their offices and into their homes, and by the same token, has pushed businesses away from traditional, brick-and-mortar operations, making them increasingly dependent on digital resources, and even giving rise to whole new business models.
With work and commerce taking place online more than ever, it’s no surprise that the pandemic also saw a massive spike in cybercrime!
In this increasingly digital world, people have become more and more engaged in privacy and more concerned about how both governments and businesses are handling their sensitive information.
A single slip-up in this area by a company can damage the public’s trust in that brand beyond repair. As a business owner, you need to be doing everything you can to ensure your customer’s sensitive data is protected from all possible cybersecurity threats.
In today’s post, we’ll take a look at some of the most effective technology businesses are using today to protect their customers’ data, how they work, and where they might fit into your organisation.
But First, Some Fundamentals…
Any cybersecurity expert will tell you that the technologies used to protect customer data are only as good as the business operating them.
With this in mind, here are some of the key policy fundamentals to bear in mind when protecting your customer data.
- Limit Access to Customer Data: There’s never going to be a need for everyone in the business to have access to all the information customers share with you. Though fresh new start-ups can afford to be a little ‘laissez faire’ in their approach to data access. In general, it’s important to keep access to customer data to an absolute minimum. The fewer people who have access to sensitive data, the fewer weak points there are for hackers to exploit.
- Don’t Collect Unnecessary Data: If you store up reams upon reams of customer data that you’re never going to use, this will not only create a larger, more appealing target for cybercriminals to go after but can also grind down the trust customers have in your brand. In a post – Cambridge Analytica world, people tend to be suspicious about any entity that seems to be gathering every scrap of personal info it can.
- Have a Policy for Getting Rid of Data Once It’s Been Used: Leading on from the last point, it’s also good practice to destroy customer data once your business with that customer is concluded. Though it may be useful for marketing and research purposes, the value of old customer data usually isn’t worth the risk. Having a policy of getting rid of customer data will not only reduce the chance of a damaging leak, but also improve the trust within your customer base.
- Make Data Security Everyone’s Job: Though you’re likely to have a designated cyber security specialist as part of your organisation, customer privacy is far too important to rest on the shoulders of a select few people. Just like health and safety rules, there should be a certain level of awareness and responsibility when it comes to policies that are directed at protecting your customers’ data.
- Make Transparency A Priority: Finally, make sure that your customer privacy policies are 100% transparent, and remind your customers that you care about the safety of their sensitive data. Instead of listing every last detail in a long-winded policy document that few people will actually read, highlight the key points on your website, your social profiles, and any other marketing where it fits. Aside from assuring your customers, it will also open up dialogue and tap your target market for new ways that you could be doing security better.
Now, let’s look at some of the newest, most secure technologies businesses are using to protect customer data.
Utilising the Blockchain
Most people have heard of the blockchain in some capacity, usually when talking about cryptocurrency trading and NFTs. What makes the blockchain interesting from a security perspective is the fact that it’s intrinsically more secure than similar digital structures.
Each individual ‘block’ in a chain of data is linked to an original ‘block’, referred to as a ‘genesis block’ within cryptography. This structure makes the blockchain a uniquely decentralised system, which in turn makes it highly resistant to security breaches.
Both private and public blockchains share this advantage of being decentralised systems, with private blockchains offering great security for internal business communications, and public blockchains being used increasingly to protect customer data during transactions.
Through the use of a public blockchain with a ‘private key’ to verify user identities and keep them anonymous to third parties, in combination with confidential computing to allow access to transactional records without exposing sensitive data, businesses can enjoy airtight security at every stage of the checkout process.
Machine Learning and AI
Both consumers and business leaders are often guilty of assuming that the more complex a given piece of technology is, the more susceptible it is to security breaches. Though there’s a lot of nuances when debunking this assumption, AI is one area that’s tended to make businesses more secure, rather than more vulnerable.
As artificial intelligence becomes the preferred technological avenue for managing large sets of data, it’s being applied more and more often to standardise security policies, and protect the information it’s used to manage.
By analysing user behaviour patterns, and using this information to detect anomalies in the way that a given user behaves, AI algorithms can restrict user access from the moment it detects the early signs of fraudulent activity.
Like anything that artificial intelligence can be used for, the sheer increase in efficiency also gives it a serious edge over more conventional and familiar cybersecurity methods. Rather than relying on human cybersecurity professionals who have a limited amount of time to detect, flag, and neutralise threats, utilising AI cybersecurity eliminates this issue altogether, operating 24/7 and using sophisticated behaviour models to identify malware in a fraction of a second.
Digital Twin Tech
One of the biggest cybersecurity challenges facing businesses in the tech sector is the fact that new technology often introduces new kinds of vulnerabilities, which leaves cybersecurity professionals constantly playing catch-up with the current landscape.
Digital twin technology is a cybersecurity method that’s built around combatting this exact problem!
In a basic sense, digital twin allows businesses to create replica cybersecurity models of new devices on a given network (hence ‘twins’) which can then be exposed to various online threats in the way that the real device would, with cybersecurity professionals observing how they behave and identifying any deficiencies in the existing security.
As you can imagine, the applications for digital twin security are fairly limited in scope right now. However, as the Internet of Things becomes more and more pervasive in physical products, digital twins are set to become a staple of manufacturing any kind of consumer product that fits into the “smart home” of the very near future.
Embedded Hardware Authentication
PINs, passwords, and memorable information may add extra layers to online security, but on their own, these methods are becoming obsolete in the face of modern hacking tactics and cybersecurity threats.
Embedded hardware authentication is a method that’s increasingly adopted by tech companies, embedding sophisticated layers of technology into their hardware and protecting user data from the get-go. With embedded hardware authentication, components in pieces of hardware can act in the same way as a security USB dongle or a separate device with a unique OTP generator.
Even if a given piece of hardware is no longer in use, it can still represent a security risk until the data is destroyed by a professional IT recycling service. Priority WEEE explains, “Whilst data wiping is a perfectly acceptable standard in the industry, we go one step further by having all hard drives physically shredded. This ensures that data cannot be recovered due to human error when using software removal devices, therefore eliminating any potential security risks to your data.”
With this in mind, even businesses that may not have anything to do with manufacturing are expected to make embedded hardware authentication a priority when buying new equipment, thereby adding another layer between cybercriminals and their customers’ sensitive data.
Zero Trust Security Models
The Zero Trust Model is a security method that requires any users of a network, whether they’re using an internal or external account, to be validated and authenticated repeatedly in order for them to gain access to sensitive data.
In a zero trust model, the security framework will assume that there’s no “standard” network edge, and is built around the modern scope of networks that can be either local, cloud-based, or a hybrid of the two, with potentially legitimate users accessing it from anywhere in the world.
There’s no one security method that keeps zero trust networks as secure as they are, with most networks within this model using a combination of multi-factor authentication, embedded hardware authentication, and identity protection to maintain robust security.
While this approach to security can be quite labour-intensive, requiring businesses to constantly monitor network user behaviour, it’s lauded as one of the most comprehensive ways to keep a business’s networks secure and prevent costly customer data breaches.
Wrapping Up…
While the cybersecurity landscape is changing at a dizzying speed and new threats are cropping up all the time, businesses can stay one step ahead by being early adopters of robust security technology.
We hope this post has opened your eyes to some of the more dangerous threats facing customer data security, and given you some great new ideas about how you can fortify yours!
