Advice for Organizations: Privacy is Good for Business

Protecting your customers’ privacy is a competitive advantage. Respecting consumers’ privacy is a smart strategy for inspiring trust and enhancing reputation and growth.

Tips for Transparency and Trust

• Privacy is everyone’s business: If you collect it, protect it. Follow reasonable security measures to keep individuals’ personal information safe from inappropriate and unauthorized access.

• Transparency builds trust. Be open and honest about how you collect, use and share consumers’ personal information. Think about how the consumer may expect their data to be used and design settings to protect their information by default.

• Build trust by doing what you say you will do. Communicate clearly and concisely to the public what privacy means to your organization and the steps you take to achieve and maintain privacy.

• Conduct due diligence and maintain oversight of partners and vendors. If someone provides services on your behalf, you are also responsible for how they collect and use your consumers’ personal information.

Five Ways to Help Employees be Privacy Aware

Educate employees on the importance and impact of both protecting consumer and colleagues’ information and the role they play in keeping it safe.

• Help employees manage their individual privacy. Encourage employees to update their individual account privacy settings by visiting Update Your Privacy Settings on staysafeonline.org

• Host a “lunch and learn.” Invite experts to talk to employees about why privacy matters. Engage staff by asking them to consider how privacy and data security applies to the work they do on a daily basis, regardless of the department. You could even invite your employees to join NCSA’s Data Privacy Day event virtually via livestream on Jan. 28.

• Create a #PrivacyAware culture. Encourage all employees to sign up as Data Privacy Day Champions! It’s free and NCSA will provide a toolkit with valuable, user-friendly resources. Share messages about privacy throughout the office, on internal message boards or through available communication platforms now through Jan. 28.

• Give Back. Talk to young people about why privacy matters. Organize a company-wide volunteer day with local schools to teach students about privacy and online safety. Use these easy-to-follow tips to help you get started.

• Have fun while learning. Organize a scavenger hunt, competition or game that helps employees learn about the importance of privacy. Recognize and reward employees for being #PrivacyAware.