Personalization is no longer a nice to have; it is now expected. However, as businesses collect user information to tailor experiences, they may be vulnerable to data breaches. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2024, 77 percent of CX leaders regard themselves as accountable for ensuring customer data security.

Fortunately, businesses can personalize their customers’ experiences while keeping their information secure—the solution is to implement proper customer data protection. In this tutorial, we will discuss why maintaining client privacy is vital, as well as the ten steps you can take to assist keep your customer data secure.

What is Customer Data Protection?

Customer data protection is a strategy businesses use to keep customer data safe from cybercriminals, internal negligence, and other breaches. This can involve network security, password protection, and data encryption procedures.

Protecting customer data is important for building seamless and trustworthy personalized customer experiences (CX). As the demand for AI-driven, personalized experiences increases, CX leaders are proactively acquiring new skills to protect data and enhance the customer journey.

For businesses, robust data protection can build trust with customers. Per our CX Trends Report, 70 percent of consumers won’t purchase from a company if they doubt its ability to protect their data. Brands that engage in proper customer data privacy and customer transparency can unlock the power of seamless, personalized experiences that foster customer loyalty. This can lead to a positive brand reputation and an improvement in your bottom line.

For customers, effective security measures lead to more personalized experiences. Personalization is important because it creates a custom experience—whether it entails tailored product suggestions based on purchase history or delivering proactive customer support. When businesses embrace data protection and feel confident gathering and using customer data, they can provide a better, highly personalized CX.

How to Protect Customer Data

Now that we’ve covered the why behind protecting customer data, we’ll delve into the how. Here are 10 tips to fortify your security measures.

1. Understand your obligations

The first step in protecting customer data is becoming an expert in the subject. Familiarize yourself with applicable data laws and regulations in your industry—a topic we outline below—and note where your customers are coming from.

For example, you might do most of your business with customers in the United States, but if you have some European clients, you should research European privacy laws to make sure you adhere to them. You may also need to be aware of industry-specific regulations, such as compliance with HIPAA if you’re in the healthcare industry.

2. Train your employees

Many data breaches are caused by some level of human error. This can be as simple as misplacing confidential passwords or responding to a phishing email from a cybercriminal pretending to be the CEO.

Given how easily data can be exposed, it’s crucial to conduct regular training sessions and exercises with your team to ensure they understand the importance of safeguarding customer data and the proper protocols for doing so

3. Define what data you keep

Many businesses today leverage customer analytics to guide marketing efforts and product improvements. While that’s important, having too much customer data is a problem. Cybercriminals target businesses with large archives of consumer information, so collecting more data than you need can make you a prime target.

Instead, take inventory of all the customer information your business stores and evaluate how well it’s serving your business needs. Keep what you need and delete what you don’t to limit your risk.

4. Limit data access and keep a detailed access record

Only certain employees need access to every piece of consumer data. For example, an employee on your customer service team may not require access to the same information that a member of your marketing team needs. Limiting customer data access to the select employees who need it is good practice.

You’ll also want to keep a detailed access record. This creates a log of who is viewing what kind of data and when—allowing you to ensure that your team is following best practices and that there isn’t any unauthorized access.

5. Evaluate your vendors

If one of your third-party vendors or your customer data platform (CDP) is involved in your data, you need to vet them. Do research to make sure they comply with relevant data protection regulations and are qualified to handle your sensitive information. Evaluate if they are certified in data protection, too.

Zendesk, for example, has several compliance certifications and memberships to keep your private data private.

6. Embrace encryption

Encryption is a security measure that obscures data so only authorized users can read it. If an unauthorized user were to access encrypted data, it would appear scrambled and unreadable—but when verified users access it, the data reverts to its normal state.

Read Also: The Role of Conversational AI in Voice Commerce

This technology is valuable in several situations, such as protecting a Wi-Fi network or using a password manager to store sensitive passwords. Encrypting data wherever possible adds an extra layer of security that can reduce the risk of data breaches.

7. Keep your software up to date

Constant software update notifications may seem annoying, but doing so is a cybersecurity best practice. These updates typically involve security patches and other modifications that make it harder for hackers to break into your system. Cybercriminals are always searching for businesses that don’t have up-to-date software—avoid becoming a prime target by keeping your software updated.

8. Redact personal information

There may be times when you need to store data or share a document with sensitive information. In these cases, redact customer or employee information that isn’t essential for the task at hand. For example, remove a customer’s Social Security number from a document that the marketing team needs to access. Regularly engaging in redaction can limit the exposure or misuse of sensitive data.

9. Eliminate data silos

Data silos happen when businesses store various data in separate locations—for example, having customer billing records in one system and purchase history in another. Break down these silos by implementing centralized locations where you can house all sensitive information and customer data visualizations. This unification helps to keep information secure and leads to better data practices. It also enables support teams to personalize customer interactions.

10. Regularly audit yourself

Finally, you’ll want to conduct regular internal audits to ensure your protection processes are continuously up to snuff. These internal security audits include penetration tests and vulnerability scans, which can help you judge your security status. By proactively addressing your security, you can address your internal weaknesses and mitigate exposure risk.

How to Assure Customers About Data Privacy?

To protect client data, customer care representatives should understand and apply a variety of data privacy best practices.

Every person in an organization is accountable for keeping client data secure and sustaining confidence. Whether cybersecurity teams use role-based access to data or CX teams limit the amount and types of data they collect, each department may contribute. Employee privacy training on a regular basis can also assist firms keep consumer data private.

Discover some critical best practices for managing, maintaining, and securing consumer data.

1. Adopt a data governance strategy

Data governance strategies can help organizations manage information across departments. This strategy should align with the organization’s overarching objectives and growth plans, so leadership teams must approve it before implementation. Further, data governance provides guidance and removes the guesswork for customer data management.

2. Establish and implement cybersecurity policies

In addition to a data governance strategy, organizations should have cybersecurity policies in place. Security teams should be able to enforce these policies for internal and external users.

With third-party vendor relationships, security teams should understand and manage the security expectations set in service-level agreements. Teams can break down these agreements into small steps to ensure everyone — including employees, leadership teams and service providers — understands and can meet expectations.

3. Limit access to data

Employees should have access to customer information based on their roles and connection to the data. Organizations can base these permissions on each role’s intended purpose. For example, marketing teams may need demographic data, while customer service teams may need customers’ account information.

This approach also means that as team members’ needs change — for example, if someone switches to a role with different access requirements — their permissions should change to what is necessary for the job.

Different types of permissions include the following:

• Full control. The user can take ownership of the data, including storage, access, modifications, data deletion and assigning permissions.
• Modify. The user can access, modify and delete data.
• Access. The user can access data but cannot modify or delete it.
• Access and modify. The user can access and modify data but cannot delete it.

4. Only collect necessary data

Less information helps decrease the threat of data breaches, so organizations should only collect data necessary to accomplish tasks. For example, organizations don’t need to collect a customer’s full date of birth and could use a month and date or a month and year instead.

Organizations could also adopt compliance verification, such as a know your customer (KYC) framework, which helps decrease the amount of data that organizations store. KYC uses third-party sources to check users’ input, verify the information and confirm their identities, then stores minimal or no actual data after.

5. Conduct a data audit

In addition to limiting access to data, organizations must determine what types of data to collect, how to store the data — if not centrally located — and how to use that information.

A data audit can help organizations discard unnecessary data. This process can help evaluate how safely they store data, help purge old files and improve privacy best practices in the event of cyber attacks.

6. Encrypt data and implement password protections

Organizations should use password protection, such as multifactor authentication and password managers, to secure confidential emails and data. Additionally, encryption — such as file-level encryption — can help protect data on computer hard drives, and 256-key bit length encryption can secure emails.

Also, services that detect repeat passwords can help eliminate reuse and mitigate the risk of data breaches related to password theft.

7. Stay on top of software updates

Data breaches, such as the 2017 Equifax data breach, occur primarily due to a failure to update a third-party software’s patches.

Software patches are ways for developers to quickly fix issues or add new features. If organizations don’t accept and distribute patches in a timely fashion, hackers can take advantage of the vulnerability and put many people — millions, in Equifax’s case — at risk.

8. Establish and execute a solid security infrastructure

With the right tools, a solid security infrastructure can ensure data remains protected. Organizations can support this infrastructure with the following tools:

• Antivirus software can make regular scans on all workstations and servers to maintain systems’ health statuses.
• Antispyware and anti-adware tools can protect computer systems against malicious software and protect customers’ personally identifiable information.
• Pop-up blockers can protect against pop-ups, which act to compromise the system’s health.
• Firewalls act as an additional layer of protection and provide a barrier between data and cybercriminals.

9. Train employees to be diligent

Employees cannot implement customer data privacy best practices if they don’t know best practices to handle a breach. With thorough training, employees can learn their organization’s policies on cybersecurity best practices and ensures an organization’s security strategy is up to par.

Trainings should include updates and refreshers to keep employees aware of data privacy best practices as cyber attacks evolve. Additionally, security teams should provide real-life security breach examples as blueprints of what not to do, and train employees on ways to protect against such breaches.

10. Proactively communicate with customers

Organizations should be transparent with customers about how they use data, so consumers can understand and potentially limit access to their data. For example, GDPR in the European Union and similar policies protect customers based on consent.

The entire organization is responsible for data privacy across the customer journey. Every time employees touch customer data they must ensure they don’t compromise customer privacy.

There are several different options for businesses to keep customer data safe. These include encryption methods like password protectors, virtual private networks (VPNs), malware protectors, and antispyware products. Also, look for customer service software like Zendesk that comes equipped with enterprise-grade security.