Allow us to take you back to the year 2018 when the infamous Panera Bread data leaks hit all the major headlines.
The sensitive customer data that was exposed for months even after the detection of problem on the official website. This included Panera customers’ first and last name, date of birth, address, email address and even the last portion of their credit card details.
Though, the warning was sent to the company in August 2017, this data was exposed for a large duration of time and was easy to be compiled by the site visitors.
The similar data breaches against Delta Airlines and sears and Saks and Lord & Taylor highlight an urgent requirement for this digitally driven age: Improved web application and Cyber Security.
“Besides seamless accessibility and communication, your customers deserve to have data accountability, agile crisis management tools and Cyber Security”
All thanks to digitization, we are slowly moving towards a more customer-centric world where customers aren’t just mere spectators but also the fulcrum of important business relationships. If we go by David Ogilvy’s infamous statement, “The customer isn’t a moron. She is your wife”
Take a minute or ten to browse through the internet and you will discover the most intelligent of business leaders are already investing large sums of money in developing customer centricity through political and financial capital. Not to forget, their loyalty programs are already at the forefront of all these efforts.
Unfortunately, up until a data security breach occurs, customer loyalty or cyber security programs aren’t considered digital assets by enterprises. It took a legal battle for Facebook and Cambridge Analytica to realize the value of customer data and gain an understanding that they cannot cross the boundary of infiltrating individual privacy even if it is as minute as what kind of cuisine a person likes.
If you are keeping customer loyalty program as an afterthought then you are highly likely to find yourself muddled-up in a data-breach case that might anytime crop-up in near future.
Moreover, data leak isn’t just the matter of losing data but also the matter of losing customer’s faith. And there are plenty of competitors in the market who are peeking for such an opportunity to hijack your valuable customers. As per study conducted by KPMG’s consumer loss Barometer, it is found that 19% of the consumers will stop purchasing from a particular retailer if it has ever been hacked.
As companies take their entire and the most valuable data to the cloud, they are automatically putting themselves at a high-level risk. The Covid-19 debacle has pushed even the most technologically traditional enterprises to shift on the cloud. It is highly likely that we will hear about many data breach cases in near future.
Cybercrime expert Brian Krebs also agrees that transitioning to cloud is like landing yourself in murky water. You will be certainly gaining the benefits of high speed, improved agility and cost savings but you also run huge security leak risks at the same time. For shape-shifting cyber attackers, this amount of data available on the cloud is something they have been eyeing to exploit.
A tarnished user experience in today’s digital world is equivalent to a damaged brand, thousands of lost customers, lost revenue and even a legal battle.
No matter how big or small the enterprise is, business leaders must know that keeping cyber security high on priority list is the only way to avoid subsequent data breaches. What C-suite executives and people high-up the corporate ladder need to do is jumping on the realm of proactive protection from reactive disaster recovery.
In the end, your customers are the true assets of your organization and deserve much more care and protection than anything.
