Data Privacy Tips for Employees

Posted on 20th September 2023

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Data privacy is essential for protecting personal information and ensuring that your company and employees’ devices stay protected from malware, viruses, and scammers.

However, data privacy can be a difficult topic to communicate and navigate, especially for individuals who are unfamiliar with the topic. Our guide gives you several data privacy tips you can use with your employees to ensure that all data is kept as private as possible.

What Is Data Privacy?

Data privacy refers to privacy surrounding sensitive data that may be shared online with third parties. Data that may be considered sensitive includes a person’s name, date of birth, gender, contact information, IP address, location data, and bank account details or credit card numbers.

Examples of third parties that may be able to access this data includes online shopping websites, social media websites, or other websites where personal information or financial transactions are handled.

While not every third-party website will have suspicious motives, it’s important for employees to be aware of how their data is shared online and how they might share data using company devices to prevent the accidental loss of sensitive personal data.

Why Is Data Privacy Important?

Data privacy is incredibly important for both employees and customers of a company, as keeping data privacy and data protection tactics in mind helps to prevent the loss of sensitive data to scammers or cyber criminals.

Customers will also want to remain assured that any of their personal data handed over to a company will be secured and not at risk of data breaches, making the customer susceptible to serious data privacy issues.

You should also keep in mind that a data breach that occurs due to negligence or improper data storage procedures on behalf of your company will likely result in fines and liabilities.

Tips for Helping Employees Keep Data Private

The following data privacy tips for employees help make the importance of data privacy known and encourage your employees to protect their personal data and the company’s data on a daily basis.

Raise Awareness About Personal Information

One major issue that companies face when trying to educate employees about data privacy is employees not knowing what exactly counts as personal, sensitive information. It’s important that you raise awareness about personal information and give examples to your employees so that understand what counts as private data.

Examples you can give of personal information include:

• Full names and dates of birth
• Addresses or other location identifiers
• Passport number, driver’s license number, or identification card numbers
• Financial information, such as bank account or credit card numbers
• Race, ethnicity, gender, or orientation
• Medical history
• Criminal history

Once your employees are aware of what personal information is sensitive and important, they can be properly instructed on only sharing these items with trusted sources and when necessary.

Organize Employee Privacy Training

Organizing a day for dedicated employee privacy training is a great way to make sure all of your employees are on the same page regarding data privacy, how to protect personal information, and how to recognize unsafe situations online where their data might be at risk.

Data privacy awareness training gives you a chance to communicate new regulations and legislation around keeping data secure, as well as company policies related to the protection of both employee and customer data.

Promote Scam and Phishing Awareness

Some of the most problematic things that compromise employee data are scams and phishing attempts. Promoting awareness of what scams or phishing attempts may look like helps employees to recognize these items and avoid being tricked into clicking on suspicious links that download malware and viruses, steal personal information, or create other data privacy hazards.

Make sure that employees are doing their due diligence when it comes to reviewing the senders of emails to avoid illegitimate senders by using a people lookup tool, refraining from clicking on suspicious links, and avoiding the transfer of confidential or personal data via email.

You may also want to advise employees against falling for scams that are delivered to their cell phones or another company device, as these types of scams are becoming increasingly popular as awareness of email scams and phishing attempts increases.

Have Employees Report Email Scams

Reporting email scams or other types of scams that come through company inboxes is essential to preventing this from happening again or stopping potential scams in their tracks.

Instruct employees to report any email scams or other suspicious online activity to the IT department or provider, or a governing body in your area that regulates data privacy. You should also make sure employees know how to mark suspicious emails as spam or scams in the designated email provider being used, such as Gmail or Outlook.

Encourage Employee Password Safety

Proper password safety and awareness help to stop data privacy problems before they can even occur, and you should make sure that employees know how to craft a password that protects their data.

If you want to increase the security of employee data, you may want to consider a two-factor authentication system or password changes every set number of days to ensure that all data is kept as private as possible.

Making Sure Data Stays Private

Data privacy is essential in today’s world, and if you have employees, it’s important to make sure that they also understand the value of securing data and keeping sensitive information out of the hands of scammers and cybercriminals. Follow the guidelines in our article to ensure that employee data stays secure and private, no matter what.