How Retailers Can Balance Privacy While Foiling Thieves

Introduction

Customer identity and access management (CIAM) encompasses privacy regulations that protect your customers, regardless of whether they’re shopping online or visiting your store.

So, how can you optimize customers’ privacy without overbearing authentication and security measures?

Here, we’ll uncover what privacy in retail entails, plus give insights into the importance of compliance and fostering a positive customer experience.

What Is Privacy In Retail?

Privacy regulations apply to all businesses–physical stores, data-driven retailers, and ecommerce. Strategies aim to protect the following:

• Integrity of stored customer data, such as name, address, contact details, and financial information
• Physical privacy of payment cards
• Deletion rights, enabling customers to remove their details from stored databases
• Access from unauthorized third parties, like thieves and malicious hackers
• Confidence in ensuring retailers don’t share or sell customers’ information

Policymakers must adjust their strategy to cater to their business model and vulnerabilities. For example, a retail store must consider physical measures to protect customers submitting payment details or email addresses.

Meanwhile, an ecommerce site would revoke employee ID access to reduce phantom accounts opening vulnerabilities to hackers.

Why Is Privacy Important to Retailers?

A pragmatic privacy strategy is paramount to protecting the retailer’s reputation and compliance with state and national privacy framework laws. Learn more below.

• Regulatory compliance: According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 38 states enforced privacy bills.–for instance, the consumer’s right to understand and revoke personal details, such as an email address, for marketing purposes. Businesses, including retailers, should follow nationwide compliance by the CCPA. These regulations ensure customers’ deletion, access, and opt-out of sale rights.
• Consumer trust and loyalty: Outlining a privacy strategy implementing modern physical and digital security measures improves customer’s confidence in the business. Data leaks raise apprehension among paying customers, cause long-term reputational damage, and impose hefty recovery costs.
• Protection of a valuable asset: A large database is imperative for retailers. Confident customers are less likely to opt out of marketing emails if they feel their email addresses are safe. Retailers can use this data to maximize customer relationship management and analyze trends in consumer behavior to create further products and identify business development opportunities.

How to Balance Customer Privacy and Security

The following tips share actionable guidance on implementing privacy and safety measures with retail security system technologies that don’t hinder the customer’s experience.

Introduce Cloud Integrations

Cloud integrations offer retailers a safe and accessible way to manage sensitive data. Cloud-based solutions enable retailers to encrypt information, making it difficult for hackers to read confidential data.

Improved security minimizes the risk of data theft, saving retailers considerable costs in recovering from the incident. For instance, the Harvard Business Review states that audit fees can be 13.5% higher than companies that don’t experience a data breach.

As part of cloud integration, customer profiling enables retailers to gather, store, and create personas. This information allows retailers to create targeted marketing campaigns and expand their product ranges.

Avoid Overzealous Measures

Overzealous measures include excessive authentication factors when logging into an ecommerce account or obstructive security tags on clothes or smaller, low-value items.

Modern technology enables retailers to facilitate passwordless authentication. Email magic links send a unique one-time passcode directly to their inbox, meaning customers can access commercial sites easily. Eliminating passwords diminishes the possibility of thieves intercepting log-in details to accounts where customers potentially store their payment and residential details, too.

With ecommerce sales equating to a fifth of retail sales globally, establishing smooth navigation to your site is paramount to driving conversion.

Enhanced Data Governance

Implement adaptive security policies that allow teams to adapt to new threats in real-time and maintain compliance with updated regulations.

Initiate internal practices such as a password policy involving routine password changes and specifications–such as case sensitivity and character, number, and special symbol combinations. Add complex security questions that update regularly to prevent older users from retaining access information.

Field-level encryption enhances protection over single cells and fields within databases containing confidential customer data. Only users from authorized servers can decrypt the data, improving data retention and safety.

Final Thoughts

Modern measures such as passwordless authentication, cloud-based security, and field encryption are paramount to a sturdy privacy strategy. Ultimately, these measures work “in the background,” meaning they rarely disrupt the customer’s experience.

In some ways, they enhance it–improving access to personal accounts and the ability to maintain control over their shopping experience. Similarly, these measures help retailers comply with state and national laws, preventing financial loss through fines or breaches.