How to Keep Your Business’ Private Data Safe and Secure

Whether we’re one of the biggest corporations in the world or we’re a family-owned company in small-town America, there’s one thing that most of us have in common in this sector: we’ve got a lot of data to keep track of.  With data comes the need for privacy, and that’s an ongoing issue that many of us face.  It can be quite difficult to keep everything safe and secure.

Of course, as you could probably tell from the title, there are ways to make this process easier.  In fact, there are plenty of programs and third-party platforms that help us keep employee data just as safe as we keep customer data.

The bottom line is that while we may not think about it as much as consumer data, the private information of our employees absolutely needs to be protected as well.  Sure, a lot of that can safely rest on the shoulders of our human resources department.  However, it’s a waste to leave them to sift through wage and income verification processes when these can be automated.

How does any of that work, though?  Why would we want to bother?  These are all questions that we’ll be aiming to answer today.  Make sure to stick around if you’re curious or would like to learn more about keeping data safe and secure.

What Sort of Employee Data are we Talking about?

The biggest question that seems to arise in relation to this topic is simple: what do we even mean by employee “data”?  There are a few answers to this question, and it’ll depend (at least to an extent) on the sorts of things that your company does in your industry.  Think for a moment, though, about what your HR department is in charge of.

Chances are, you’ve got them handling things like payroll and ensuring that everything is equitable and sent out on time.  The thing about that is that unfortunately, this can be a time-consuming task.  There’s a lot of other things that your HR managers could be doing with that valuable time, such as establishing workshops, team building, or really…anything else.

The data that they’re working with is the type that we’re discussing – namely, the sensitive information such as payment information as well as private details that they’d like to keep safe from the general public as well as the rest of the office.  For this reason, it can be valuable to have a platform that allows as few people as possible to have access to this data.

Privacy, Platforms, and Automation

Privacy, Platforms, and Automation

We’ve covered some of the basics here as far as what information and data we should focus on keeping safe.  There are several companies such as Vault Verify that can help with the process, especially for those who aren’t really sure where to start.

How does this actually work, though?  One of the first steps will be to onboard your organization with the platform that you’ve decided to use.  From there, you can start to automate processes that were done manually before, such as inputting employee data such as usernames and passwords or payment details.  

This will free up your HR department to focus on bigger and better things, which is always a positive of course.  The nice thing about utilizing a platform is that they can offer things like high-end encryption, so that the data isn’t visible to anyone unauthorized on either side of the screen.  HR representatives can verify that employees have submitted answers without having to look at their sensitive data.

Some other uses include establishing APIs so that verification for tax documents like I-9s can be done automatically, as well as any unemployment claims that may need to be dealt with.  There are a ton of possibilities, as you can read about here.  

Is This Level of Privacy Really Worth the Cost?

The final thing you may have been wondering is this: do we really need to prioritize this high level of privacy? While it may seem a bit surprising, the truth of the matter is that this really is quite critical.  Maintaining the privacy of our employees is every bit as important as protecting it for our clients.  

Beyond that, though, it’s pretty easy to see the other reasons why we’d be willing to spend the money on this sort of thing.  After all, it can help to make our HR departments much more efficient, which is quite valuable at the end of the day.  There’s the age-old adage of “you have to spend money to make money,” and that’s certainly applicable here.

Next time that you’re considering whether or not it’s worth it, hopefully this helps you figure out! 

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