Kroll Fraud Solutions Blog – A Dialogue on Data Security

Tip #4: Provide adequate privacy considerations for your customer incentive and online marketing programs

During this season, half the battle for retailers is simply gaining the customer’s attention. The most recent trend is the use of social networking and mobile phone apps to offer incentives, coupons, and general information to consumers – and, of course, to collect data. This is a wonderful opportunity, but it also leaves you with a lot of data to protect, and protect it you should. One of the driving costs of data breaches is the loss of business that comes as a result. According to Ponemon Institute reports, the abnormal customer churn (or turnover) rate resulting directly from a data breach is slightly higher than last year — up from 3.6 to 3.7 percent in 2010.

The Identity Theft Resource Center released a new study recently that pinpoints hackers as the No. 1 culprit behind publicly reported data breaches. While cyber intruders are a legitimate worry and must be stymied through sound security measures, organizations can’t let “cyber security tunnel vision” cause them to lose sight of the myriad other vulnerabilities that lead to a breach – most of which are actually caused by internal sources (i.e. your employees), whether intentionally or unintentionally.

There has been a resurgence of talk lately about the virtues of telecommuting as a business continuity tenet – in the face of brutal snowstorms that have battered the East coast, and in relation to more long-term factors that could put a dent in productivity. Companies hoping to boost green initiatives are also interested in telecommuting as one way to reduce the company’s environmental footprint and cut down on employee gas consumption.