Businesses use forms to collect user and customer data for different purposes, typically marketing. Once their web developer tests them for vulnerabilities and ensures they are bug-free, the marketing team unleashes them to fulfil their purpose. After collecting this data, businesses need to protect it. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires that all businesses that collect user or customer data handle and store it properly. In all cases, this means ensuring your website and its related systems are secure.
Store Sensitive Data Properly
“Sensitive” data means different things to different businesses. For example, it might mean medical records for a doctor’s office or customer names for a retail store. Regardless, all businesses need to secure all data they collect and have complete control over who can access it.
There are different data categories depending on your type of business. It is best to work with an expert who will help you understand them and how to store each type. These experts will also help you with GDPR compliance automation so you remain compliant even as the regulations evolve.
Update Your Website and Application Software
It is well-known that many businesses use Content Management Systems like WordPress to build their websites. The teams behind these applications work hard to ensure they are free of security vulnerabilities that could put users and their data at risk.
Many people do not realise the newest versions of these systems are correctly patched to ensure proper security, but older versions might have vulnerabilities malicious actors can take advantage of.
The best way to protect your business and user data and ensure GDPR compliance is by routinely updating and patching all software you use on your website. This includes asking your web host to update all software used on the server that hosts your website.
Have Strict Access Control and Discovery Policies
Many businesses have specific website pages they only want to be accessible to specific people. A common practice is ensuring only people with specific links can access those pages. However, the data they contain can still leak in other ways.
Site searches, menus, sitemaps, listing pages, XML sitemaps, and third-party search engines, including Google, can make this data discoverable. Businesses can work with web developers to restrict access to these pages for unauthorised users and to ensure they do not appear anywhere on their site.
Making these pages invisible to search engines is challenging but is still possible with robust security measures in place. For example, they can ensure these pages are inaccessible to search engine robots and crawlers.
Use Proper Encryption
These days, almost every website uses an SSL certificate. These certificates encrypt user data in transit and protect it from malicious users. There are several problems that can arise with this; some businesses let their SSL certificates expire or do not configure them properly.
Browsers do a great job of ensuring users do not enter data on “insecure websites”, but that does not always work. Also, developers sometimes forget to configure SSL certificates to cover subdomains and subsites, so you should ask yours to do that.
We enter a lot of data into different websites and do not think about how it is transmitted or stored. Fortunately, GDPR provides a framework for how businesses handle user and customer data and continues to play a critical role in ensuring the safety of this data, especially when stored.