A company should strive to protect customer’s information. Otherwise, one false move can result in serious public relations problems. Not only that, it will cost the organization a lot of money. For this reason, a proactive approach is the best and most cost-effective solution to protecting customer’s personally identifiable information safe. Here is a quick guide on how to so without breaking the bank.
SSL:
To get started, when hosting a website, one should get an SSL certificate. In fact, this is basically mandatory when an organization has a credit card processing account on the site. To do this, a site owner should buy a certificate from a reputable company. At the same time, the firm should hire a qualified person who can install it and make sure it functions properly. Remember, with merchant accounts, a user will need to have a secure experience and an SSL certificate will help him or her avoid sending the information over unsecure means.
Ask for minimal information:
Without a doubt, a company will need to ask for some information when conducting credit card processing transactions. However, when asking for information, the company should keep the questions to a minimum. In fact, one should only ask for the credit card and contact information of a client as it will make things easier should a breach occur.
Store locally:
It is cool to use the cloud as a means of saving and sharing data. But, when dealing with customer information, one should keep it on a local drive. This way, when problems occur, the company can isolate the issue easily. Of course, when on a local drive, it is hard for problems to happen in the first place as nobody outside of the local network will have any access to the files. So remember, when storing merchant account information or credit card processing receipts, keep it local.
Hire an expert:
While it is not cheap, it is extremely beneficial to hire a person to test the system and try to break it immediately. With a qualified hacking expert, a company will see its vulnerabilities quickly. Then, with this in mind, the organization will know what it needs to do to get things back in order.
A company must take multiple steps to avoid a security breach. Sadly, most do not follow this advice. When this happens, the company will have serious short and long-term problems.