Looking after your data is not just good practice, but it’s something that if you do it incorrectly, can cause ructions within your business. Approximately 80% of data breaches in the United Kingdom come from human error, and with tougher penalties under the GDPR, it’s critical for every organisation to improve its data security, and also its attitudes to data in general. How can businesses get better at data protection?
As part of the GDPR, information needs to be removed promptly. As articles 17 and 19 of the GDPR describe, individuals have the “right to erasure,” also known as the “right to be forgotten.” This is why you must have a swift system to remove data. This is especially important in organisations that carry a wide variety of sensitive details, for example, a medical centre. There are services that provide a home manner of data removal and even do it sustainably, through X ray film recycling practices, but the fundamental component is that you need to have a system in place to remove this data quickly and effectively.
For people that work in customer service, it’s vital that they know what data they are responsible for as part of the organisation, that also what they are allowed to do with it and what they are not allowed to do. We need employees to take ownership of the data they handle, and this is why clear communication is always the most important tool to ensure a business will thrive.
As we deal with customers, we can gain a shorthand when it comes to the amount of technical information we have access to. It is a minefield to communicate to employees the policies and procedures relating to information privacy security and your confidentiality, but this is why ensuring you can communicate it in an easy-to-understand manner can allow those employees to have greater insight, but it can also fully protect your firm from tough penalties under the GDPR.
Because human error is the biggest cause of data breaches, it’s vital to have critical ground rules in place that every employee can follow. One very simple thing is having strong passwords, but also changing them regularly and not sharing passwords with anybody else.
Employees can try to cover up a mistake, such as a data breach. It’s important that we create a culture of accountability while making sure that if an employee makes a mistake that they are not severely punished if it boils down to human error. Data breaches can have a detrimental impact on numerous aspects of your business, such as your customer service, which is why we must work to limit losses in light of a data breach, but also ensure that an individual in an organisation that makes a mistake is not viewed as incompetent. Human error is something that we are all guilty of, and this is why data protection is in place because it allows us to mitigate mistakes, but also ensure that we are doing right by the company, the customers, and our employees.
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