When fully adopted and running at its best, your CRM will be chock full of customer data. Everything from names to titles to email addresses and phone numbers, as well as some potentially more private information (depending on your industry) will be stored in the CRM. Which makes it a treasure trove of information for your business—and hackers. 

In short: If your organization is not vigilant, your CRM could be a data privacy risk.

CRMs Have A Target on Them

The most effective CRM systems depend on accurate collection of high-quality data. The benefits of this data to the organization collecting it are clear: solid customer insights, full support of personalized customer experiences, and better business relationships. The downside? Your CRM is now the ideal target for cyber criminals. 

Lest you think only big-name companies are at risk, we’re here to disappoint you: Businesses of ALL sizes have come under attack and lost valuable personal data to hackers. 

The ability to harness the data you have in your CRM can be transformative for your business. But anyone who’s watched Spider-Man knows that “with great power comes great responsibility.” In short? Now that you’ve collected all this data, your business is on the hook to ensure it is used both ethically and securely. 

Data Privacy and the Law

Any company collecting data needs to be transparent about how the data is collected, how it’s stored, and how it’s used. That’s not just good business practice; in many cases, it’s the law. 

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): This regulation from the European Union mandates that companies get explicit consent before collecting data, provide data portability, and make it easy for individuals to easily request their information be modified and/or deleted at any time. 
• California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): While this act is mainly applicable to businesses in California, most US-based businesses will apply the same rights to all their customers. Those are the right to know what data is being collected as well as the right to request data be deleted. 
• Data Privacy in other countries/regions: We could spend all day listing the various data protection laws by individual states and countries around the world (Canada, Colorado, India, Australia, the list goes on). While each have unique requirements, the basic core tenant to protect individuals’ data remains the same. 

No matter which regulation(s) your company must comply with based on your location and/or that of your customers, non-compliance typically comes with pricey fines, damage to your org’s reputation, and significant loss of customer trust. 

Keeping Your CRM Safe

We’re not trying to thoroughly scare you—though there is something to be said for having a healthy respect for the safety of your customers’ data! The point is: Your CRM has a lot of really important, really valuable data. You want that data. Hackers do, too. So it’s your job to make sure your CRM does not become a data privacy risk. 

First, let’s look at the key privacy concerns with a CRM. These include data collection transparency, consent management, data security, and preventing the unethical use of your customer data. It’s your business’ job to inform your customers what data you collect on them, how it is used, and then ensure it’s safely stored out of reach of breaches or unauthorized access. 

Next, there’s the non-negotiable need for data security. Use a trusted and reliable CRM vendor. Hackers will often start by trying to determine which CRM system their target uses so they can exploit any known vulnerabilities of that particular system. A solid system will use data encryption and provide secure access controls. On top of that, the system will be demonstrably compliant with data privacy laws and regulations. 

Once you have the right CRM in place, there are several steps you can take to ensure ongoing compliance. 

1. Regular Compliance Audits: Review your CRM practices on a regular basis to make sure they’re in alignment with relevant laws and regulations. 
2. Document Data Practices: Keep detailed records of how you collect, store, and use customer data. 
3. Designate a Data Protection Officer: Appoint someone who is responsible for overseeing your org’s compliance efforts.
4. Train, Train, Train: Make sure your employees fully grasp how important compliance is and also know how to best follow regulations. 

Navigating Security

The good thing about most CRM systems is that they allow customers to control access permissions and restrict certain users from accessing particular data. 

Balance is key here: You want to take advantage of these safeguards, but not overuse them to the point that security becomes too complex to navigate and users find workarounds that end up invalidating the security safeguards anyway. 

Keep it simple. Start by assuming everyone should have access to everything, then begin removing specific types of access from individuals and roles that don’t have any need to access those specific areas of the database. 

Use these questions to guide who gets access to what:

• Is there a legal reason to restrict access to this data? 
• Does having access to this particular bit of data help this specific role do their job better? 
• Does this role need to frequently work with CRM data in order to do their job? 
• If this role has access to this information, does it create a privacy concern for either customer or employee? 

Collecting and Managing CRM Data the Right Way

The other way to ensure you stay in compliance with data privacy regulations is to make sure your org is collecting customer data in ethical ways. Some of the ethical ways you can collect data include:

• Interviews
• Online analytics
• Transactional data
• Customer feedback
• Observation
• Public records

Once you’ve collected the data, apply what experts call data minimization.

• Collect only what’s necessary. You only need to collect the minimum amount of personal data necessary for specified and legitimate business purposes. Leave out the rest.
• Define the data’s purpose. Make it clear why you’re collecting data, and make sure its use is compatible with your disclosed purposes.
• Review data regularly. Make it a point to perform regular reviews and audits on your collected data to assess necessity and remove any unnecessary information.
• Implement data retention policies. Make sure there are clear data retention periods for your data categories based on both business need and legal obligation. As soon as data is no longer needed, delete or anonymize it.

Best practices such as training, data minimization, and compliance audits will go a long way toward helping your organization effectively collect and manage CRM data while also maintaining data privacy. 

Final Thoughts on Updating CRM Data

One final thing that can help with making sure your data remains as up to date as possible? Is making it easier to update and manage that data right from where you’ll get a lot of updates: your email. ExtendSync works with both Outlook and Gmail to allow users to not only sync important emails to NetSuite contact records, but also create, edit, and delete accurate contact records right from their inboxes using information supplied to them from direct email communications. 

Not only that, ExtendSync leverages native NetSuite permissions, which means that if a user can’t see specific NetSuite records within NetSuite, they can’t access them via ExtendSync in their inbox, either. It’s a win-win for keeping data accurate, up-to-date, and secure. 

Try it for yourself with no obligation for two weeks. Get started here.