Best Practices to Protect Customer Data Effectively

How to Protect Customer Data Effectively in Top 8 Ways

Introduction
 Due to the enormous use of internet in every field, cybercrime is growing rapidly and every
company is looking for effective ways to prevent themselves from such attacks.
 However, the customer service industry is one of the main industries facing this challenge as they
deal with a lot of customer information on daily basis.
 To gain new business opportunities and to perform well, contact centers need to prevent their
customer information from these attacks as nothing can harm their reputation more than a
security breach.
 Also, it not only creates a bad name for their contact center but it can easily throw them out of
business. Due to all these factors, securing customer data is on top priority for every contact
center which can be a bit difficult but not impossible.
 Below we are providing you with some of the techniques that can help a contact center in
effectively preventing their customer’s data. By integrating these methods with their best call
center software a contact center can be certain about the safety of the user’s data.

 Encryption is the most commonly used method for data protection.
 It is the process of converting the data or information in such a way that only the authorized
persons can read and understand the data.
 It uses a secret key called decryption key to convert plain text information into the encrypted
cipher text.
 There are two main types of encryption namely: Symmetric/ Private key encryption and
Asymmetric/ Public key encryption.
Ways for safeguarding customer data:
Data Encryption

 We are all aware of the fact that passwords are the only link between a network and a
successful cyber attack.
 Thus, using a strong password is one of the most essential requirements when talking
about data safety.
 But a lot of contact centers do not understand the importance of using a strong
password and then they have to deal with the problem of data theft.
 Below are certain tips that the contact centers should adapt while setting up a
password for their various accounts.
Use a strong password

 Most of us make this common mistake of using our personal information such as people’s
name, date of birth, or anything which we can remember easily.
 Due to this, it becomes very simple for professional hackers to crack your password and
burst into your system.
Avoid personal information
Avoid common passwords
 To keep a password easy to remember a lot of people consider using common passwords
like abc123 or using characters in sequence like 123456789 etc.
 To prevent users from using such passwords there is a list circulated every year that
contains a list of commonly used passwords and using that should be avoided at any cost.

 For the purpose of data security the contact centers should adapt to the policy of “one password
for one account”. In the case of any unfavorable event where one of your passwords is cracked,
the last thing that anybody wants is to have hacker access to all your other accounts.
 So to be certain and safe it is required to use a different password for every account. But it also
becomes difficult to memorize all your passwords.
 Instead of using unique passwords the contact centers should use ‘contextual passwords’. A
contextual password requires you to remember only single passwords and modifying it based on
where it is used.
 For example, use a password “K!wi0285”. To use the password for your network modify it by
adding net and ork like “K!netwi02ork85”.
Use different password

 Apart from all these above points, the contact center should ensure that every member follows
the best practices for password generation like the password should be at least 8 characters having
a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special characters.
 Also for better security, the password must be changed after every 6 months and it should not be
similar to previous 6 passwords.
 They can ensure that by integrating these best practices in their password security policies.
Use of best practices

 For truly securing your customer’s data contact center requires multiple levels of user access.
 Allowing agents to have access to only the information that they require to perform their daily
duties. By reducing the total number of people that has access to user data there are more
chances of keeping customer data safer from any theft.
 Also, the use of external storage devices like USBs and external hard disks should be prohibited
within the office premises.
 Along with that, the contact center should also ensure that no employee takes a printout or send
customer information outside through any other channel like printouts, emails etc.
Restricted access

 The highest chance of data theft that the contact center faces is through their employees and
their business partners as they are the one having direct access to the customer data.
 So for proper protection of customer data that the contact centers conduct multiple background
checks of their employees as well as their contingent workers like vendors, contractors, temporary
employees etc.
 The different type of background checks involves Identity Verification, Criminal history check,
character verification.
Background checks

 The Internet is a doorway for new business opportunities for all the contact centers. And due to this
advantage of the internet, most of the organizations are making an effort to move their business and
services online which will not only provide convenience and easy access to their users but also gives
an upper hand to the contact centers when compared to their rivals.
 As most of the services of contact center are available online so to communicate with any agent a
user has to provide their information on the contact center’s website.
 Thus, the contact center needs to ensure that customer information is private and secure through this
medium as well so the customers will not feel hesitant to share their valuable information by the
means of internet. One such solution that provides online transaction security is SSL certificates.
 SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. It is essential for protecting a website and provides privacy,
security and data integrity for customer information and to the website by creating an encrypted and
secure connection between the website and internet browser which adds to the authenticity of the
website.
SSL certificates

Apart from being cost effective and scalable a cloud-based contact center can be very
secure due to following advantages
Use of cloud
Prevents data loss
Due to its high storage capacity and data redundancy features a contact center can be
assured of its customer’s data not being lost in unavoidable situations like hardware
failure, lack of storage or network connectivity issues.

 DoS stand for Denial of service. It is a type of cyber attack where the perpetrator
tries to bring a network down by flooding it with useless traffic.
 By using a cloud-based contact center the management can ensure safety against
DoS attacks as the cloud service provider focuses on measures to prevent a large
amount of traffic aimed at the contact centers cloud server by using techniques like
absorbing, monitoring and dispersing.
DoS Prevention

 With the help of cloud service provider, the company can be relaxed about the
chances of a data breach as they have various security protocols in place which
blocks the hackers from intruding and damage the actual data.
 Thus, we can see how a contact center can effectively manage various security
aspects without investing in infrastructure and management with the help of cloud-
based solutions.
Prevents breach of data

Multi-factor authentication is a method of authentication in which user is granted access
only after he/she has presented more than one form of verification from the following
categories:
Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Something they know
 This the most commonly used form of authentication and also the most easily hacked
method.
 In this method, the user needs to prove their knowledge about a secret in order to
gain access to like the password or pin number.

This category involves authentication with the help of something that user have to prove
their identity like security tokens pin number or OTPs (One-time passwords).
Something they have
Something they are
 This type of authentication is also known as biometric authentication. It requires a
physical proof of identity to gain access to the system.
 The best example of this is the fingerprint sensors available in mobile phones to gain
access.

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Best Practices to Protect Customer Data Effectively

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