PPB April 2017

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For businesses in the
promotional products
industry, the watchword is safety.
But there’s one product that can
never be effectively “recalled”—
sensitive account or employee
information that ends up in the
hands of hackers or fraudsters.
The Federal Trade Commission
has practical suggestions for
companies of any size and in
every sector about what they can
do to help protect themselves
from the risks of data theft.
Start with Security: A Guide
for Business, a nuts-and-bolts
brochure from the FTC, offers
advice on raising your defenses.
Share the publication and its
accompanying videos with your
staff, but if you’re pressed for time,
it boils down to these 10 steps:
1Start with security. Your
business needs to maintain
certain sensitive information.
But in an era of cyber threats
and hack attacks, collecting
confidential data “just because”
isn’t a sound business strategy.
If you haven’t recently evaluated
the customer and employee
data you ask for, think it through
with 21st-century risks in mind.
Hackers can’t steal what you
don’t have. And remember that
the best defense against data
theft is a workforce trained to
start with security.
2 Control access to data
sensibly. Not everyone
needs a backstage pass to all
confidential data your company
maintains—for example,
customers’ financial information
or employees’ Social Security
numbers. Limiting access on a
“need to know” basis reduces
the risks that an ill-intentioned
insider could pose.
3Require secure passwords
and authentication. It’s
impossible to be 100-percent
hacker-proof, but at a minimum,
you can implement free or low-
cost methods to make it harder for
them to sneak onto your network.
Insist that your employees and
affiliates use strong passwords
and defend against “dictionary
attacks”—programs that
systematically try to guess
passwords—by locking people
out after a reasonable number of
unsuccessful access attempts.
Raise Your Defenses
Data safety
starts with a
security mindset.
by Lesley Fair
62 | APRIL 2017 |
THINK