Your Employees’ Sensitive Data Needs to Be Encrypted Too

Cyber security is an imperative part of managing an organization’s data, and if it’s not handled properly, hackers could find a way to access it or steal it for themselves. The information that’s most important to hackers is typically customer information and internal data, like company policies or employee personal information. Of these two, which do you think most businesses prioritize in?

It should come as no surprise that businesses will generally prioritize the security of their customers over that of their employees. InformationWeek summarizes a survey conducted by Vanson Bourne:

Nearly one-third of companies and organizations with 100-to-2,000 employees in the US, Canada, India, Australia, Japan, and Malaysia, say they don't regularly encrypt their employees' bank information, and 43 percent don't always encrypt human resources files. Nearly half say they don't routinely encrypt employee health information.

It’s quite shocking that so many businesses will leave this valuable information unencrypted and vulnerable. If hackers decide to target it (or a nosy person wants to read it), they could easily access sensitive files that could put your team in jeopardy. Encrypted files, however, are much more difficult to access. Without the encryption key, the data will appear to be nothing more than a mass of jumbled characters. Financial services usually automatically encrypt customer data, but employee information likely isn’t experiencing the same benefit. It’s your responsibility as an employer to make sure that your employees’ sensitive information is protected from hackers.

Marty Ward, Vice President of Product Marketing at Sophos (sponsor of the survey), told InformationWeek, “That companies are prioritizing customer over employee data is not surprising. But it is surprising how much employee data is exposed out there, and [that they are] leaving intellectual property and financial data unencrypted."

Here are just some of the examples of data related to your everyday business operations that you should encrypt:

• Employee bank account information.
• Employee social security numbers.
• Employee health records.
• Company intellectual property.
• Company financial data.
• Passwords to company accounts.

In other words, companies should be prioritizing the encryption of their in-house data, simply because there’s so much at stake. For example, it’s one thing to have a customer’s credit card information stolen since credit cards can cancel charges that are deemed fraudulent, but it is another problem entirely for Social Security numbers and employee bank information to be stolen. This can lead to identity theft and major losses for the victim that can be difficult, if not impossible, to undo.

There’s still plenty of ways to keep your information safe, especially now that encryption services are becoming increasingly easier to implement. Most organizations have plans to implement encryption for their business over the next two years. Is your data preserved and safe from hackers? To find out, contact Computerware at (703) 821-8200.