Your call center contains a substantial amount of private information. Names, phone numbers, and social security numbers are stored on personal computers and corporate servers. This is why a data breach can cause significant problems for you and your customers. When working remotely, protecting this information is even more difficult. Without hypervigilance, your call center is even more vulnerable to a cyberattack. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to protect your sensitive data. Preparing now will save you later.
Five Tips to Keep your Call Center Information Safe from a Cyberattack.
1. Protect Your Login Pages
One way to protect information is to protect any login in pages or company portals. Call center agents typically have to access many systems in the workplace. This is why you should use a cloud service provider that offers single sign-on supported by multi-factor authentication, SCIM, SAML, or other field-tested policies. This provides access to more effective threat detection, less password fatigue, and a more productive workforce.
2. Provide Role-Based Access
Not everyone at your company needs the same levels of access. Another way to increase security at your call center is to provide different access to people in different roles. Isolate the information an agent has access to when they use company software and cloud resources. This prevents unauthorized agents from accessing confidential information. The majority of hackers use deception to manipulate people into giving out sensitive data. This is why providing agent access to private information based on need and job title limits the number of individuals who could be targeted in a cyberattack. You can gradually increase agent access as they show you can trust them and remove the access after a vulnerability is detected or the employee leaves the company.
3. Use Encryption
Encryption is another way to keep your call center safe. Encryption can prevent spoofing and man-in-the-middle attacks. Spoofing is when an email address, sender name, phone number, or website URL is disguised to convince someone they are interacting with a trusted source. These types of attacks are incredibly common. This may include an agent’s supervisor or someone they do business with. A man-in-the-middle attack is where an attacker secretly relays and potentially alters communications between two people who believe they are directly communicating with each other. These attacks let hackers snoop on data passing through the company intranet. This can provide the hackers access to a computer where they can read unencrypted files. For this reason, you need a TLS certificate and virtual private network (VPN) to secure the transit and storage of information.
4. Include Contact Center Threat Monitoring
Contact center threats are not new but managing remote threats can be all the more difficult. You need to have systems in place to keep your call center and employees safe. Remote work makes it even more challenging to monitor call center transactions and quickly respond when a threat becomes apparent. Because typically IT teams track more IP addresses and looser usage patterns than before, they may need to allow unknown IP addresses to access hardware and services. This is why cloud services and third-party tools using artificial intelligence are needed to find real-time threats. These tools can help make you and your team aware of threats before it is too late.
5. Enforce Security Policies
Make sure agents are following all guidelines and requirements for cybersecurity. This includes everything from passwords to encryption to increase data security. You also should ensure the policies are audited annually and agents are regularly trained on cybersecurity. Additionally, support your policies with the proper training. Initial training should be provided during onboarding. Additional training should be used each year as a refresher. New training is essential any time new policies are created.
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