Discussion and Response: the issues organization’s face with regards to the protection of its customer information

by Harshal Singla 

Customer data is a key asset for many organizations to maintain their competitive positioning. Given the declining cost of data storage, most organizations are trying to gather as much customer information as possible with caring for issues such as redundancy, integrity and data breach. Organizations have understood that complete prevention of cyber attacks is not possible but proactive strategy could be followed to minimize the impact of such incidents. One of the crucial steps in defining the data protection plan is identifying key issues related to data management and security.

Organizations are struggling to protect their customer data as data is growing at an exponential rate. Data is generated and stored in all formats such as structured, unstructured which makes it difficult to come with comprehensive approach. Moreover, data is fragmented and stored in multiple locations. Companies are using different databases to maintain information and it is hard to track data at every single location. As organizations are moving towards cloud, it is becoming more difficult to figure out the exact location of data.  

Organizations can notify users about the security policies by putting them in the service contract. They can issue weekly newsletter to update the customers, or they can even hold information sessions with customer on periodic basis. Customers are usually not happy when they realize their personal information is getting tracked but if organizations could explain the rationality behind tracking information, they will surely understand. Organizations should also ensure that sensitive information is encrypted to win trust of the customers.

References

Bloomberg Vault (2015). Protecting customer data: The challenges. Retrieved from,  https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/protecting-customer-data-challenges/