The reputation of any business is hugely important—without a good reputation, sales will slow and potentially even stop, and trying to build up trust again is a time consuming (and expensive) thing to have to do. This is why many businesses choose to hire a PR company to help them maintain a good reputation and to increase their profits.
As a PR agency, you therefore have a doubly difficult task ahead of you—not only will you need to protect the reputation and promote the businesses that are hiring you, but you need to ensure you do the same for yourself. One of the ways you can do this is to protect the data you obtain. Here is why this is so important.
Reputation risks
Perhaps the biggest reason of all why protecting data is vital for your PR firm is reputation. If something were to go wrong and a client’s sensitive information was stolen or compromised, your reputation would suffer hugely, and perhaps even more than most companies since you deal in PR and should be aware of the pitfalls that can happen.
Trust is hard won and should be kept hold of at all costs, because without it you will lose business, and when it comes to protecting data, it is so simple to do. If you work in the cloud, as many businesses do these days, get informed on the latest threats and how cloud security should be a priority by visiting mcafee.com. Cloud security can keep your computers, your network, and any work you do on the cloud safe and secure. You will also need to make sure that everyone understands the consequences of downloading or opening files with viruses, and be vigilant as well.
Onus of responsibility
Whenever anyone trusts any kind of sensitive information to you, whether that is through filling in a form, signing a contract, or even simply by paying for something with a credit or debit card, they need to be able to assume that that data is safe. If not, no one would ever buy anything or sign any contracts.
Therefore, it is imperative that you take your responsibilities to your clients seriously. Having the software mentioned above installed, training your employees, managing passwords, and having a security policy that you can give to clients will all help. This policy will act as a form of reassurance, showing clients that you are aware of the problems that you and they might face and that you are doing something to mitigate those problems as far as possible.
Obeying the law
Not only is the reputation of your business at stake, and the trust that you have built up potentially all lost in an instant (particularly if there has been a particularly big breach), but you could even be breaking the law. When it comes to client data, you must observe new rules regarding GDPR, which is related to EU law, but affects U.S. websites too if they have visitors from EU countries visiting them. This is all about storing data; how it can be done and which data can be kept.
Ensuring you are keeping up to date with these changes in legislation means that not only will you not fall foul of the law, but any potential clients will see that you are up to date with what is happening in the digital world, and that is a positive point for any business these days.
