You must have heard about data protection these past few months. Especially since Facebook has gotten in troubled water regarding its users’ data. Cambridge Analytica scandal has shown internet users that their data was important and that it was worth their care and protection.
Digital businesses deal with a lot of data like payments, user profiles and their private accounts, for example. You don’t want big corporations and private internet users to have access to all of these informations. Here is how to protect your E-Commerce’s data.
PAYMENT DATA PROTECTION
When your clients pay on your digital retail, they expect their payment data to be protected. A lot of digital payment gateways allow you to stock all these payments, invoices, contracts, etc. directly on their servers.
Naturally, stocking your clients’ data on yourself, on a cloud for example, is a bad idea since it’s not encrypted. The majority of payment gateways like PayGreen or PayPal choose to encrypt all of their details they get from their clients. Big payment gateways are know for respecting privacy policies around the world and allow you to practice a cross-border
Like that, using a payment gateway service allows all of your payments and related data to be heavily protected.
CLIENTS’ PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION
Owning a digital business means that you’ll have to deal with a lot of personal data. These details are your clients’, who trust your website and your professionalism regarding their information. It can be constituted by their phone number, email address, age, and other details about their lives.
In order to protect their privacy effectively, you should avoid having all of their data stocked on an Excel sheet. Data breaches are a common thing, and you don’t want to break your customers’ trust. As it is often repeated, the trust bond shared with your client is an important part of your business’s success.
PROTECT YOUR E-COMMERCE’S DATA
If you’re serious about your E-Commerce, the use of CRM (Customer Relation Management) softwares is the way to go. The majority of them allow you to take care of your clients’ data with close-to-no risk. You can choose one which fits your needs more than the others, like the ones allowing you to manage your team or handle all of your sales and administrative work, or the CRM tools allowing you to handle your company’s after sales services.
Independent data securing softwares exist and allow you to secure every bit of information about your E-Commerce and you.
NEW DATA PROTECTION: GDPR Legislation
As some of you may have heard, a new European legislation regarding data security and acquisition is about to take effect. Indeed, the text is scheduled to take effect on May 25th of 2018. This text has been voted since 2016 and will be applied across the whole European Union. This time has been given to the companies which need to update their data policies in order to fit this new text’s law.
WHAT IS THIS GDPR ABOUT ?
This text’s core objective is to regulate European data traffic across the territory. The last text aiming at protecting European’s data has been voted in 1995. Therefore, European parliament main objective by voting this new application is to update the latest voted text, and harmonize all European members’ regulations. The whole point of this text is to protect e-consumers’ data across the territory.
A lot of companies don’t meet the text’s rules yet. May 25th will mark the time when 78% of these non-fitting companies will have to adapt to this new European regulation.
WHAT IS GDPR LEGISLATION’S IMPACT ON E-COMMERCE?
Even if your digital business is established in the American or the Asian continent, you need to take care of how your manipulate European data. If you’re using European citizens’ data,the text’s rules apply to your business. Your company’s size doesn’t matter. Indeed, giants like Facebook, Amazon or Google (Alphabet) will have to adapt to this European legislation.
With this brand new text, web users will have an access on their data. All of the websites handling their data will be required to give them the integrity of their details. After that, web users will have the possibility to ask to delete all the details companies have on them in their database.
In order to improve data protection, there are 3 conditions your E-Commerce has to meet in order to respect this new legislation:
- You need to justify why you harvest data from your audience. If they choose to edit their data, you have to prove them that the editing has been effectively done. All edits made to your data have to be classified in order to send them to your clients if they ask you ;
- You have to explain why you gathered your clients’ data and how you use it, everything has to be justified ;
- If a data breach occurs, you need to keep your customers informed within 72 hours.
CONCLUSION: Data protection and GDPR Legislation
Data is an important part of E-Commerce right now. It needs to be handled with care and seriousness. Today’s news regarding security breaches and fraudulent data uses force digital businesses to get up-to-date regarding multiple laws handling web users’ informations.
Whether your database is composed by payment details or your clients’ personal details, you need to mind about security. You need to fit the new regulations depending on whether you handle European citizens data or not.
Keep in mind that a lot of softwares and tools exist to ease and secure your use of data (some of them even allow you to ease your management and administrative tasks). Don’t hesitate to keep an eye on these multiple solutions in order to fit this new European legislation because your clients’ data is the most precious thing your E-Commerce has.
Image credit : Aaron Iker
