HR Tips

How To Keep Your Applicant And Employee Data Secure

November 24, 2022November 24, 2022 by Reposebay Human Resource Limited

Read Time:2 Minute, 39 Second

Dear Reader,

According to Kaspersky Lab, there are 97 million internet users and 45.3% have suffered internet-related crimes. With cyber-crimes at an all-time high, keeping applicant and employee data safe is crucial in this technological age.

How To Keep Your Applicant And Employee Data Secure | Reposebay

Steps to keep applicant and employee data secure

1. Create a data protection policy

Data protection policies that state why a company is collecting certain information help to communicate with the client the purpose of personal data collection. Thus, companies need to create a data protection and security policy that state:

1. The purpose of the data collection

2. How long the data is in use

3. Who has access to personal data

4. The security measures placed to protect personal data

Some extra security tips:

Do not keep medical records stored in the same place as employee data, adding another layer of security by limiting access helps to mitigate a data breach.
Only collect the information you need to reduce the risk of sensitive information breaches. Information such as NIN(National Identification Number) or BVN (Bank Verification Number) is not needed during the hiring stage.

2. Use the right tools

The industry best practices in cybersecurity for IT and HR teams must be in place at your organisation. Some of these practices are:

1. Only give data access to the necessary personnel

2. Prevent a lateral breach of data in computer networks by segmenting data.

3. Always require authorization before granting access, this should be in place for everyone regardless of authorization in the network.

4. Manage identities and their level of access, once a person has a reduced level of access to data, their access should immediately be on the network to reduce the room for a data breach.

3. Educate and train employees and applicants

Awareness is the best defence. What you know cannot hurt you as what you do not know. Over 80% of data breaches occur through stolen credentials.

Organising training sessions for employees and applicants enlightens them and exposes them to areas where they may be lax in protecting their data.

Some security best practices for employees and applicants:

When accessing the company network when working remotely or outside the office, using a Virtual Private Network(VPN) is important.
Use passwords made of many character types.
Enable 2FA(Factor authentication) or multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Be aware of the risks when using public Wi-Fi.

4. Draft a plan

Always assume that at some point in the existence of your company, hackers will try to gain access to your personnel data. Therefore, be resilient and diligent in deploying cybersecurity best practices. Some factors to consider when creating a plan: