Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on CRM software alone; so poor security practices are not an option. In the wake of the Wikileaks revelations, IT companies are scrambling to up their security measures. So, just how secure is your data? Here are 3 useful ways to improve your company’s security and protect your CRM data.

Know thyself

What better way for you to protect your company than to know and inspect your company’s current business processes. It is possible that some of your current processes could be insecure, which can leave customer data exposed. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Does the company house information that is sensitive, and how is that information being handled?
2. Are there any system permissions in place for your organization’s employees? Does everyone have the same access levels to your system data?
3. Is the current customer database secure?

Without answering such questions and having a system in place to warn you of data breaches, your customer data can be easily exposed.  Performing routine risk assessments will help you and your company fight against any attempts of data breaching.

Salesforce is a good example of a company who fell victim to a security breach, and by improving its security measures, has not suffered a breach since then.

Train your staff

Your employees are the most critical assets to protecting your CRM data. It means they should know how to safeguard and handle your company’s data. You must make them aware of potential security threats.

To help improve security measures within your company, you can educate your employees through annual and quarterly security eLearning courses, on-site briefings, training classes, and more. Through security training modules, your employees can become more aware of your current security measures and will be more inclined to put security measures into practice. They also will feel more comfortable disclosing any mistakes or potential security threats. Additionally, by training your employees, you will help them to make good judgments and identify and avoid risks, Training your employees is one of the best ways to secure your data and your company.

Enforce strong passwords

Companies that allow their employees to use weak passwords are asking for a data breach. The best practice is to enforce employees to use strong passwords or employ a password manager, like LastPass. Password managers require employees to remember only one complex password, while the password manager remembers all the others.

Companies like Salesforce are also using two-factor authentication techniques to provide an extra level of security to user accounts. Such techniques can enhance and improve your organization’s security.

If you have integrated your CRM and ERP system using our SYNC App and would like to learn more about come common security concerns, check out our Commercient blog post on ERP Security Concerns.