Now that customers are grounded within the online world, they are generating data that can significantly increase a business’s profits. But according to recent surveys, the vast majority of Americans are concerned about companies collecting their information.
Nowadays, businesses are inextricably connected with each other. Many might be using different email marketing providers or website hosts and still, others are associated with affiliate marketing or use customer referral services. Each of these individual organizations might treat customers’ data differently.
Businesses now need to think about how their customers’ data might be exposed and what this means to consumer confidence. Products and services can be impacted by a lack of privacy. Not protecting customers’ data means your company’s reputation will take a hit. And unlike Facebook, most businesses can’t absorb that kind of damage.
Protecting Your Customers’ Data Can Help Your Business Grow
Recently, in an article from Harvard Business Review, 72% of Americans stated they didn’t want to share their information with businesses and wanted to maintain their privacy.
Putting safeguards on your customers’ data can actually enable companies to increase the value of their brand and grow their client base.
News headlines are full of stories about big companies being hacked and millions of customers’ data being compromised. Seeing this, means customers are increasingly more concerned about their personal information being compromised. They are now more careful than ever about doing business with someone who doesn’t protect their data.
Many of the larger companies are now instituting tougher consumer privacy policies so they can win over people who care about data protection. And as these companies put more protections in place, smaller companies are feeling pressured to behave in a similar way thus ensuring trust in their product and securing future growth.
But no matter how big your business is, it’s now imperative to put protecting your customers’ data at the top of your priority list.

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 1. Cultivate a Security Culture
You can have the greatest systems in place, properly penetration tested and configured perfectly, but the point of failure in your cybersecurity plan will almost always be human error made at one point or another. It is important to cultivate a culture that teaches your employees how to work securely. This can be achieved with even just basic policies like not leaving laptops unlocked and open when walking away from them.

2. Phishing will Target Your Users
A seemingly innocent looking email that looks like it came from Facebook asking a user to update their password can be a point of entry for someone phishing for access. Once they gain access to one password it is likely a bad actor will be able to use that information to start moving laterally within your systems to gain more access.

3. Spear Phishing will Target Your Users Even More
The difference between phishing and spear phishing is in methodology. Whereas phishing is more of a “spray and pray” approach to gaining access to credentials, spear phishing uses data about the targeted systems, company, or person to actively target. For instance, sending an email disguised as one from your internal IT department or an executive within the company.

4. The Basics Are Still Important
Make sure you fully use technologies like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC for your emails. DKIM validates that the sender is who the sender says they are. Spoofing authoritative or trusted domains is a common methodology when phishing and so making sure that your users are alerted, or never even see an email that comes from a spoofed trusted domain, could be the difference between a company that has credentials phished from a user and one that doesn’t.

5. Use Multifactor Authentication (MFA) Whenever Possible
MFA can be most readily compared to your experience at an ATM. It requires two pieces of information to withdraw cash; Your debit card and your PIN. This prevents someone from gaining one piece of information or a credential and immediately having access. MFA will require an extra step from your users but should be used on your most sensitive systems.
6. Ransomware Attacks Are Going to Be Increasingly Common
Ransomware can slow the operations of a business to a crawl. The hack that took down the largest fuel pipeline in the U.S. and led to shortages across the East Coast in 2021 was the result