Tips for Contact Center Security for Remote Teams

The organization can benefit from the productivity of remote employees and save on overhead costs. However, maintaining security for remote teams is difficult. The remote contact center faces security risks like phishing, social engineering attacks, and unauthorized access, leading to data breaches.  

Are you facing security challenges that make it difficult for your businesses to protect customer data? Rest assured. 🙌

You can adopt the best security practices like multi-factor authentication, data encryption, VPNs, and other measures to protect the customer’s confidential information. This will provide you with the necessary tips to maintain contact center security for remote teams.  Let’s get started. 😎

Why does security matter in remote contact centers?

The contact center contains detailed customer information, including sensitive financial data. Strong security is essential to protect customers’ confidential data from unauthorized access and security threats. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are sets of essential rules that the finance and healthcare industries must follow to protect the privacy of individuals’ data. These rules help to maintain trust and enhance customer experience. The exchange of information takes over the network, so implementing robust security measures reduces the possibility of data risk and financial losses from cyberattacks.

Contact center security for remote teams: Tips

The contact center security for remote teams involves the following measures:

1. Multi-factor authentication

Securing login pages is the initial step to protect data to prevent unauthorized access. The remote user should always use the same weak password in multiple systems that impose a security risk. Multi-factor authentication, SAML, and SCIM are the single sign-on (SSO) features to increase security measures. Besides threat detection, SSO increases productivity by lowering password fatigue.

2. Use role-based access

The business should give access to confidential information based on the employee’s role and responsibilities. It needs to be kept private from the new remote employee. First, they should be familiar with company terms and policies. Additionally, they must demonstrate trustworthiness and loyalty towards their work and company to gain access. This is because many hackers might trick new employees into accessing the data. Using role-based information access ensures security.

3. Use encryption

There is a threat of hackers everywhere when the information is passed over the cloud network. Cyber threats like spoofing and man-in-the-middle attacks enable the hacker to spy on Internet activity, leading to data breaches. Therefore, the business needs to implement security measures like VPN and SSL certificates to secure information while transmitting over the Internet. The data must be encrypted while sharing between the contact center systems and the remote agent’s devices.

4. Contact center threat monitoring

More than standard security measures like Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) that establish an encrypted link is required to safeguard the data, especially with remote work. Multiple technology companies like Google, Azure, and ElasticSearch offer AI-powered tools that detect real-time threats.

5. Maintain strong security policies

Every company needs a strong security plan. For local and remote team settings, NIST provides guidelines on data security, including encryption and password management. Don’t forget to include security training and perform a yearly security review of your contact center. 

Contact center security best practices

The primary aim of call center security is to protect customer data. So that customers are confident in interacting and sharing their sensitive information with the contact center. The security best practices include:

1. Data encryption

Encrypting data is an ideal option to safeguard both transmitted and stored data. The encrypted data is unreadable to unauthorized users. Therefore, the organization must encrypt the customer’s medical report, credit card, and personal information, vulnerable to cyber threats.

2. Reduce Data availability and access

When the organization provides multiple access to multiple users, there is a high probability of data leakage. They should limit data access and use system permission to manage sensitive data. When the employee quits, their account should be removed from the company. Limiting data storage, such as eliminating a customer’s credit card number following a transaction, is an additional option for minimizing potential security risks.

3. Examine your security protocols

Organizations should regularly test and update their security protocols to protect customer data. The leader responsible for maintaining the data security must conduct security audits and analyze security logs. They should frequently check for malicious viruses and other unapproved software that might bring security risks to confidential data. They are also responsible for ensuring employees follow the best security practices.

4. Maintain transparency

An organization’s prime responsibility is to explain its sensitive data, why it is needed for the business, and how to maintain robust security. The organization must be transparent with its employees. The transparency will boost customer confidence and build their trust in the organization.

Contact center security compliance checklist

All sizes of businesses can use the security compliance checklist, which keeps contact centers up-to-date on the most recent regulatory standards. It reduces the possibility of fines and other penalties. Security compliance includes the following:

1. Regulatory Compliance

Regulatory compliance ensures that the contact center functions within the legal boundaries. It provides the contact center with data protection, privacy, and security rules relevant to its operation. It confirms that the contact center complies with all applicable privacy, security, and data protection laws. There are various compliance approaches to different sectors. Follow the General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) if your call center manages the personal data of the European Union (EU) or European Economic Area (EEA). If you handle health information in the US, stick to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Finally, if your call center takes the data about the payment and transactions, follow Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance.

2. Policies for Data Protection

The organization must implement strict policies regarding data protection. The policies should highlight the data management processes such as classification, encryption, retention, and deletion. Additionally, the policies should address approaches for handling confidential customer data while maintaining availability.

3. Control multiple access

Implement security measures like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and role-based access control (RBAC) to limit unauthorized access. It is also essential for the business leader to ensure that access permissions are reviewed and updated regularly based on the organization’s needs and to maintain data security.

4. Provide security awareness to employees

Suppose your organization has fired a new employee. In that case, it is crucial to provide them with the necessary data handling training and make them aware of possible cyber risks like phishing, malware, social engineering, etc. Such training empowers employees to take responsibility for the organization’s security. They will have the potential to identify threats and report to the concerned authority. Such proactive employees help the business protect customer data from hackers.

How can Dialaxy help with contact center security?

Dialaxy is a diverse solution for contact center excellence. It has multiple advanced features that enable seamless interaction. You can buy virtual numbers for the US and Canada from Dialaxy. While choosing the plan, you must provide your personal information, including your credit card numbers to make payments. It is crucial for the customer to understand that Dialaxy does not use their sensitive information without their consent but may share customer data with third parties for valid legal reasons only. Dialaxy will protect customers’ confidential data by implementing appropriate technical and organizational security measures.

Conclusion

Maintaining data security in a remote call center is challenging but never impossible. The organizational leader must ensure 100% data safety so customers can trust the organization to share their confidential information. Otherwise, they will lose customer interaction, affecting the business run and growth. Organizations can follow multiple security measures to protect the customers’ sensitive data, including using multi-factor authentication and role-based access to limit multiple unauthorized access. Additionally, you can use the VPN to encrypt the data. These security measures secure customer data from cyber risk.

FAQs

What are the best security practices for remote working?

In many cases, remote employees are the first to experience security threats. Remote businesses should worry about phishing emails, insecure passwords, video attacks, and weak backups, which are some of the security issues. Follow best security practices to overcome possible challenges. VPN is one of the most popular tools for remote workers. The business should force the employee to connect over the VPNs as they encrypt the data and prevent hackers from monitoring employee online activity.

What are the examples of security considerations for remote users?

The remote users must create a strong and unique password. They should activate multi-factor authentication for unauthorized access. The breakdown of passwords and unauthorized access leads to data breaches impacting remote employees and organizations. It is good practice to eliminate the use of public Wi-Fi to perform sensitive tasks and eliminate threats like phishing emails. In addition, regular security updates are crucial to safeguard the data.

How do you secure a remote workforce?

The business leader should take many things into consideration to regulate a secure remote workforce. Implementing strong policies, data encryption, VPNs, multi-factor authentication, controlling access, and providing adequate employee training and security awareness are some security measures to secure a remote workforce. 

How does a remote call center work?

A remote call center means customer service can handle incoming calls, emails, and chats from anywhere with an internet connection. Customer service is not confined to the office in a remote call center. Instead, they can work from home using internet-based applications.