3 Tools to Improve Your Company’s Privacy

Advances in information technology have brought a paradigm shift in information sharing and exposed companies worldwide to professional and state-sponsored cybercriminals. These cybercriminals are continually working hard to compromise your company’s identity by stealing your money, intellectual property, and even sensitive data. 

The need for the hour is to invest in privacy tools to comply with the federal regulations and keep the cybercriminals at bay

In 2018, 50 million Facebook users’ data was compromised after the attackers found the vulnerability and exploited it to access the personal data. If it can happen to a tech giant like Facebook, even your company’s privacy is at risk. 

Apart from data breaches, cybercriminals or unauthorized personals can access critical data by hacking into your email list or getting access to your private wiki – resulting in a catastrophe.

You should not consider privacy as a burden because it carries high costs and results in long-term tangible benefits. A compromise in privacy makes consumers wary of buying products or services. For example, in 2016, parents were requested to boycott the Vtech toys after a potential data breach. 

In the long run, focusing on the company’s privacy will outweigh the spending and ensures that the customer data is in safe hands. 

While searching for the best tool for improving the company’s privacy, you will come across a bouquet of options. We have listed the top 3 tools which are imperative in today’s digital age.

  1.   Data privacy and compliant tool for CCPA

With the evolution of technology and the growing surge of IoT devices has given rise to data privacy regulations like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Today, sharing data has become an inevitable part of many companies.

The problem:

From the marketing teams that buy the customer’s data for personalization to financial institutions gathering data to understand the risk of lending, data is being shared relentlessly without customers’ consent. CCPA addresses this fundamental issue of buying and selling of data without knowledge of the customers.

A 2015 study by Data Marketing & Analytics found that this data-driven marketing sector added a whopping $202 billion in revenue to the U.S. economy. With so much at stake, businesses across the world crave to get access to the customer data.

As businesses understand the answer to what is CCPA, it would be helpful to consider data privacy and compliance tools. The tools will help make a paradigm shift towards CCPA compliance in a smoother, faster, and cost-effective manner. Furthermore, with CCPA in place, your customers have the right to sue you for losing your data to hackers – making data privacy and security a topmost priority.

The solution:

Data privacy platforms like Osano using their Saas-based data privacy platforms helps companies like you analyze, monitor, and manage the data privacy and ensure all compliance obligations are in place. The privacy platform verifies:

  •         Whether you or your vendors collect unnecessary customer data,
  •         How long you store the customer data,
  •         How easily you can remove the data from your database.

The data-privacy platform offers 360-degree data-privacy capabilities through monitoring, management, and advisory.

Monitoring: From vendor risk management to real-time privacy law alerts, the platform provides daily updates, ensuring complete compliance with CCPA. Furthermore, it sends an alert on detecting a lawsuit against the vendor, which helps protect the customer’s data.

Management: Through the management, the data-privacy platform Osano ensures consent management through instant website compliance with the CCPA, and it blocks all the additional third-party cookies.

Advisory: If you are still confused about what is CCPA, you can ask an expert to guide the best practices through live feedback.

In short: Data-privacy is a complicated affair, but if you take the customer’s data seriously, you’re more likely to win their trust and loyalty for a lifetime.

  1.   Content security tool for private wiki

A private wiki (also called as an internal knowledge base or internal wiki) is a wiki where you and your team can share information such as SOPs, process documents, manuals, product requirement, and minutes of the meeting. It lets you organize, share, and find the company’s information under one roof.

The problem:

The high cost of finding information can result in a loss of millions of dollars. According to IDC data, knowledge workers end up spending 2.5 hours a day or 30% of their workday searching for information. By simplifying the ability to search, retrieve, and process essential documents of the company from a single platform like a private wiki, it will increase productivity, speed up the business operations in the company, and, most importantly, protect the trade secrets and secure the content.

When your company’s internal knowledge is getting archived in email threads, finding crucial information, and keeping everyone in the company updated becomes a mammoth task. You end up wasting time with repetitive questions, and the work gets duplicated, which eventually results in lower productivity.

This is where a private wiki comes into the picture.

The solution:

Using a private wiki like Slite, you can share sensitive information about the best practices and disruptive strategies internally with all the team members or a few chosen ones. Use the open channel for sharing with all team members and the private channel for sharing with a customized list of people. Furthermore, you know which team member has access to which information. It helps in reducing data leakages as you can track the changes. Such a tool will keep the content secure as you give the reading, writing, or admin rights to the team members.

Furthermore, your team members waste less time searching for information, thereby increasing productivity. As your company grows, Slite can become a single knowledge repository by prevents scattering of critical information across teams and tools.

Apart from securing a company’s secret, an internal knowledge base helps in better communication with partners or investors, makes smoother employee transition, and eases new employees’ onboarding.

Slite is a private wiki your team members or employees will enjoy because it has a user-friendly interface and is easy to share or process information within the team.

In short: A private wiki is your company’s single source of truth.

  1.   Mailing list management tool

Next to paid social media campaigns, content marketing, or influencer campaigns – email marketing may not sound convincing, but it works. However, the world of email marketing no longer revolves around blasting mass emails to a list and praying for someone to take the bait. Instead, it’s more about creating value and engaging the customer.

The problem:

If your email list is your garden, mailing list management is nurturing the garden. When caring for a garden, you need to regularly check for pests, weeds, and remove the dying plants, give them a dose of fertilizer and sunshine. But, without proper care, your garden is likely to wither and die. The same concept applies to your email list, and your subscribers require the same kind of attention.

Not maintaining email hygiene can prove a catastrophe because even with a list of thousands of subscribers, you witness a low email open rate, and most of your emails land in the spam folder. Your customers are indifferent to your messages, and instead of accepting it, they’re throwing it over the fence without bothering to even look at it.

This is where a mailing list management tool comes into play.

The solution:

A mailing list management tool like tye helps in email hygiene and cleaning up the unnecessary data. From merging lists to data cleanup and data checks to analysis, a list management tool holds the key to intelligent audience segmentation and list cleaning, which opens up the door for effective personalization and reduces the spam/bounce rate.

Most importantly, with increasing data-security laws like CCPA and GDPR, a mailing list management tool protects you from lawsuits. It ensures that the customer has given their consent to receive messages from your company. It also gives the customers relief that their data is safe and will be deleted anytime upon request.

A mailing list management tool will perform the following to ensure a successful marketing campaign.

List cleaning: It entails removing dormant & inactive contacts, eliminating duplicates, removing the invalid, and fixing the potential typos.

Sender reputation: Such a tool ensures adherence to email best practices for a better reputation. It eventually translates to more inbox placement.

Segmentation: List management tools segment the customers based on their interest, demographics, and purchase history to create a personalized experience.

Automation and integration: It collaborates with the ERP and CRM tools to ensure a successful campaign.

Re-engage: List management is not limited to only cleaning. A great tool will send enticing messages to inactive customers to win back their trust.

In short: An email list management tool cleans your data and keeps you free from every type of tension.

The road ahead

Privacy is a fundamental right as per the United Nations, and as a company, you need to ensure the privacy of customer’s data. Apart from protecting the data, investment in privacy tools will ensure legal compliance, enhances business management, avoids legal fines, and ensures customer security. The sooner you understand the importance of these tools, the more profitable your business will be.

Image:

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Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.