How Can My Company Protect Sensitive Information in England and Wales?

As a modern-day business, you are likely to be regularly dealing with sensitive information and data. Data breaches can be very costly for your business. It could lead to identity theft, the disclosure of personal data such as financial information, and could also worry your clients as well. Knowing good practices for data protection is a highly important aspect of managing a company and protecting client privacy. This article will explain some key aspects of data protection and will offer some guidance on steps that you can take to prevent a security breach. 

What Type of Threats Exist for Sensitive Information?

With the growth of cybercrime and data breaches, a business can face a variety of threats to its sensitive information. Ransomware, hacking, phishing and insider threats are all ways in which someone can obtain unauthorised access to your company data. 

Phishing scams, for example, are becoming increasingly common and usually involve someone sending an email designed to look like an official communication. The email will, in some way, ask you to share sensitive information (such as a password), which then grants the other person access to your accounts. Malware can also enter your devices in a number of ways. For example, clicking on certain links on the internet can put you at risk. This can grant malware providers access to your files and subsequently sensitive data. This data can include credit card numbers or confidential client details. 

Knowing the different ways in which a security breach can happen is essential to taking steps to prevent it. The rest of this article will explain 5 key steps that you can take to protect yourself and your company against a data breach.

1. Manage Your Employees

The first thing to do is to educate your employees on good practices for protecting sensitive information. If your employees use work laptops and mobile devices, it is important that those devices are encrypted and have up-to-date operating systems. However, some employees may opt to use personal devices for work. In this case, it can be a good idea to provide them with software that increases security measures. 

At the same time, it can be a good idea to educate your employees on malware and phishing scams. You should also educate employees on security information about public-file sharing applications, such as DropBox.

2. Focus on Password Security

When providing training to employees, it is important to emphasise the value of using a secure password. Your business should make sure that passwords are difficult to crack, and you should store your password information on secure password management applications.

3. Store Physical Documents Securely

While online data security should be a focus for your business, it is also possible for problems to happen when physical documents containing sensitive information get lost. For example, you should keep documents that contain sensitive personal information in secure and locked file cabinets with limited access. When you need to dispose of sensitive physical documents, you should run them through a shredder before you recycle them. 

4. Use Single Sign-On (SSO) Technology

Single Sign-On technology is a reliable way of identity mapping. This involves real-time risk analysis and a robust authentication system. Sometimes, SSOs can also use multi-factor authentication, which works as an additional security measure.

5. Create a Contingency Plan In Case You Are Hacked

In some cases, it is very difficult to prevent a hacker from getting access to your data and sensitive information. It is therefore a good idea to prepare for a work case scenario where you do have a data breach. You should first figure out what data hackers have compromised, and then change all of the relevant passwords immediately. Doing this should log accounts out wherever you or your employees are logged in. If it does not, you can do so manually. If the sensitive data includes financial information, you should contact the relevant financial institutions and let them know. 

Similarly, if the confidential information includes customer data, you should report it to a reporting bureau, such as the Information Commissioner’s Office (or ICO). The ICO is an independent authority that works to protect and uphold information rights.

Key Takeaways

As a business handling sensitive information, you should know how to deal with data privacy risks and potential breaches of sensitive data. Some steps that you can take to protect your data against a breach include educating your employees, storing your data in a secure way, making sure that your passwords are secure, using authentication technology, and having a strategy if a data breach does happen. 

It is also worth keeping in mind that you are obliged to deal with sensitive information, especially customer data, in a careful and reasonable way. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules set out some of your key obligations. It is important that you know what data the law permits you to store. If you do suffer from a data breach, it is important to notify the relevant authority as soon as possible.

If you need help protecting your sensitive data, our experienced regulatory and compliance lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

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