Here’s How You Can Ensure Better Data Security in Your BPO

Hiring offshore BPO service providers is not new for worldwide customers, but they and their clients are now more aware of the implications of data breaches. Corporations today demand strict data security policies from their vendors and expect their BPO partners to follow global protocols. While this may translate into higher short-term costs for improving customer management, data retention or data transfer, it helps secure a BPO provider’s reputation in the long term.

Here are the three essential guidelines for BPOs to overcome data security issues and uphold compliance with user privacy.

Physical security and access controls
Maintaining the security of physical assets at BPOs is the easiest part of the puzzle. Unfortunately, it is also the area that most BPOs tend to overlook and underestimate. Adopting simple on-premise surveillance technology can discourage unauthorised employees from accessing data that is of critical importance.

From a software perspective, granting role-based access controls to only the information that is needed for a particular job is also crucial. Several data breaches in the past have occurred because of easy access to data for employees of all levels. This is something that an effective security mechanism, both physical and virtual, can handle with ease. Another aspect is to conduct effective background checks of employees and also educate them about the perils of cyber attacks. Such practices help to prevent unsafe devices from intentionally or unintentionally accessing the network.

Secure communications and network
The next step for BPO data security is also an obvious one, but there have been several data loss incidents where weaknesses in communication lines and the corporate network have led to significant breaches. Since offshore BPO companies operate in different time zones and across continents, a constant communication channel is open between various parties. However, skilled cyber-attackers can take advantage of these channels, especially at high-volume moments, and obtain confidential information. For BPOs that don’t efficiently deploy data encryption solutions, this can be devastating.

Nowadays, there are several unified solutions available in the market for all industries and operational sizes to secure communications, optimise storage, encrypt data at all levels and raise alarms when unusual behaviour is detected. Providers such as Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) specialise in critical security functions such as firewalls, anti-virus, anti-spam, web content and more. Any BPO service provider worth its salt can no longer afford to overlook such solutions.

Reassure customers about data security compliance
BPO service providers that comply with stringent data control policies and have a good track record should educate their customers about the best practices they follow. Regular email updates about the integrity of their data and the regulations being imposed can help reassure customers that their data is in good hands. Customers appreciate service providers that are proactive and share the whys and whats of data security without being asked, and this also helps project an image of a particular service provider as a reliable custodian of sensitive data. At TTBS, we understand the significance of this practice keeping international information privacy standards in mind. These are indicators of any solutions company’s ability to keep data away from cyber-attackers, and our customers deserve the right to know this.

TTBS helps enterprises detect suspicious network traffic and addresses all concerns that enterprises may have on data safety issues. Our cloud-based Virtual Unified Threat Management (vUTM) provides umbrella protection with firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, anti-virus, anti-spam and web content. Our DDoS detection and mitigation service sanitises an enterprise’s traffic to enable only the secure data to reach them. Enterprises can customise these solutions as well as enjoy feasible costs of deployment.

We invite you to get in touch with the team to learn how you can implement data security best practices for your enterprise in an increasingly vulnerable digital marketplace.

1. Grand View Research - November 2018G

Sources
1. Best practices to boost data security in call centers
2. How significant is data security policy for a BPO?
3. How top BPO companies handle data security