How To Help Your Applicant And Employee Data Secure
- Natalia Ferkova
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Author: Irene Gerarduz
Since 2018, personal data organizations of EU residents need to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In particular, the GDPR is a new law that aims to strengthen European citizens’ right to data privacy and their right to protect their personal data. So, the GDPR applies to all companies that process data of European residents. For example, these could be consumers, employees or applicants. Whenever you collect and store personal data, you expose yourself to risk. Although it’s necessary, you must put safeguards in place to protect this data.
One of the biggest increases in fraud comes from using stolen identity information to apply for government grants. Therefore, employee and applicant data have become a high-value target for hackers. As a result, each year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) receives more than 1.4 million reports of identity theft. It is interesting to note here that the largest category of reported online fraud and scams. This includes more than 100,000 cases of employment or tax fraud.
Why keep the applicant and employee data secure?
The information you acquire may be sensitive when you have a job opening and start collecting applications. When you hire employees, you collect even more personal information. Therefore, you have the responsibility to keep this data safe.
How to Keep the Data Privacy Secure:
1. Create a data privacy policy
Organizations should produce formal data protection and security policies. This way they could provide guidelines for managing candidate or employee data. Particularly, data protection policies should include:
What data are collected and why,
how long the data are kept,
who has access to the data,
the measures arrange to protect the data.
2. Collect and preserve only what you need
3. Keep medical information separate
4. Restrict access to employee and applicant data privacy
Paper copies of sensitive data should be locked and in confidential areas. Furthermore, digital data should be in a secure, encrypted database with limited access.
5. Having the right data privacy tools
HR and IT teams must use the best ways for cybersecurity to protect candidate and employee data, including:
• Identity and Access Management (IAM): to avoid unauthorized access.
• The Principle of Least Privilege: Allows users the privileges needed to complete authorized tasks.
• Segmentation of data: To ease lateral movement within the computer network in the event of a breach.
• Zero Trust security models: Require access permission for individual applications even for authorized users on the network.
6. Providing training and education
Most breaches stem from stolen credentials. For this reason, organizations can provide regular training and education to employees. This would reduce their exposure and help them become more aware of dangerous online activities.
Organizations should require employees to use best practices to protect the security, such as:
Use of complex passwords,
two-factor authentication (2FA) or multi-factor authentication (MFA),
use of virtual private networks (VPNs),
potential threats when using public Wi-Fi.
Organizations must assume that at some point they will experience a data breach that exposes employee and applicant data. So, they should plan for a response in advance. Incident response plans should follow the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF). This includes: Identification, protection, discovery, response, and healing. Moreover, more than 60 percent of all companies globally have experienced a cyber attack of some form. For this reason, HR and IT managers should know that a data breach might come up. But also take steps to protect candidate and employee data.
Conclusions
Personal data reveals a lot about you, your thoughts, and your life. Therefore, this data can easily be exploited to harm you. What is more, it is especially dangerous for vulnerable individuals and communities, such as journalists, activists, and human rights defenders. That’s why this data privacy must be strictly protected.
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