Data Protection is More than a Tech Issue

Why Data Protection is Critical to Customer Value

2022 was the year consumers lost faith in corporations. 2023 should be the year to restore trust. You should assume hackers and cyber criminals target you, and you should prepare yourself. In addition to creating new customer personas, a company should be stringent about data governance and compliance. This includes how to set up secure customer interactions, implementing multi-factor authentication, protecting data, and setting up a disaster recovery strategy for customers to get back up and running quickly.  

A strong data protection strategy is essential for businesses of all sizes. It helps to protect sensitive customer data from unauthorized access, theft, or misuse. It helps to ensure that your business stays compliant with data protection regulations. It also ensures business continuity, so your business can maintain operational ability and doing business as usual.

In addition to the technical aspects of data protection, there are also important business considerations. For example, businesses need to make sure that their data protection policies are aligned with their overall business goals. They also need to communicate their data protection practices to customers in a clear and transparent way. 

Ensuring your customers are cared for should be your paramount concern. After all, no growth is possible without their support, so businesses must invest in infrastructure to stay ahead of their competition. When it comes to customer security, investing in the right provider is an absolute must—a vendor that both understands and vocalizes the value your customers deserve. This requires an investment in your customers, which ultimately means an investment in your infrastructure. 

A strong data protection strategy can help businesses to achieve a number of benefits, including:

• Increase your customer satisfaction: Customers are increasingly concerned about the security of their personal data. By demonstrating a commitment to data protection, you can build trust with customers and improve customer satisfaction.

• Enhance your brand reputation: A data breach can damage your brand reputation and make it difficult to attract new customers. By investing in data protection, you can help to protect your public image and avoid the negative consequences of a data breach.

• Reduce your risk: A data breach can lead to significant financial losses, including fines, legal fees, and damage to brand reputation. By investing in data protection, you can help reduce your risk; which ultimately means saving your bottom line.

A brand's customer lifetime value is crucial to measuring success and gauging engagement. Tracking and optimizing this value is an elusive target and paints a vivid picture of your company’s long-term financial health. How then can you succeed? 

Data breaches and ransomware events have severe repercussions: consumer confidence is at an all-time low. Laws and regulations offer peace of mind to customers, but brand reputation and customer loyalty are delicate. Consumers expect enterprise brands to protect their information AND offer them personalized service. 

Financial damage from a tarnished reputation far outweighs operational expenses. Customers would rather do business with a small company with no reputation than a large company that gives money back to executives and shareholders. They expect you to spend it on infrastructure to protect their personal information. A Ping Identity survey in 2019 about corporations and trust said that 81% of people would stop engaging with a brand online following a data breach. 63% say that a company is ALWAYS responsible for protecting user data.   

Enterprise companies' digital security strategy SHOULD be part of your customer engagement strategy. What type of message are you sending to your customers? Are you telling them they can trust you? Are you saying that the way you handle their personal information is ethical and of high importance and that THEY matter more than shareholder profits? Are you doing what you need to protect their information? 

 Customers want to be assured that you are actively investing in their well-being; that means encryption of data that you are storing and moving, anomaly and malware detection that runs autonomously and is powered by machine learning, immutable backups and high availability for fast and rapid recovery, and analytics to provide insights and visibility into optimizing your infrastructure to not only make it more effective but additionally increase efficiency, decrease costs, and gain a better return on investment. 

Growth doesn’t happen without customer involvement, and businesses must invest in infrastructure to sustain a competitive edge. Data security is an essential investment that is more than an overhead expense. You should be seeking a data security provider who recognizes and articulates the value your customers deserve.  

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