You often hear of big companies having their data hacked. This can be dangerous to their clients and customers as well as themselves.

One area of hacking is event data, and it’s important to protect it in today’s world of identity theft.

With event planning come lots of data; it’s your job to make sure it’s safe.

As the following article looks at, here are 5 tips for protecting your event data:

  1. Keep everything up to date on your computers – This is one of the easiest, most often referred to ways of protecting your small business’s data. You can usually set up automatic updates for your software and this will keep your security standards at their highest.
  2. Keep passwords complex and unique – You and all of your employees should use complex, unique passwords and change them often. Some experts say change passwords every 6 months. Try to find something better than your dog’s name or your birthdate. Experts recommend incorporating symbols, caps and numbers, and keep each password unique; in other words, don’t use the same password for everything.
  3. Use tight security – With event data, hackers have lots of opportunities to get in there with so much personal information, at hand. You’ve got choices in the security world, like secure collectors where all information is stored securely and taken from the original site immediately to prevent easy access. Tighten up if you have to.
  4. Insure yourself – Insurance is the thing that no one wants a pay out on. However, more and more companies are taking out insurance to protect in case there is a security breach. When you have so much information regarding an event, that means people’s addresses, birthdates, and often credit card information, you want to be protected from not only a security breach, but also in case it does happen. Insurance can help with damages in the case information is taken.
  5. Limit who has access – Everyone does not need access to this data. The more people with data access, the bigger the chance for a breach of privacy. Make sure to remove people if they no longer should have access, for instance if they no longer work for you or if their position has changed. Follow the above password protocol and change the passwords often, keeping them complex and unique.

Don’t Neglect Privacy Needs

Whether you have in-house events that you are planning or it’s a big public one, you need to keep this information private and secure.

Once security is breached, your business will bear the scars, so you want to do what you can to prevent any breach.

An event holds lots of personal information, and your employees and clients trust you. Keep it that way.

Many people don’t think twice about uploading personal information, others refuse to do it.

Nothing is wrong with a happy medium, where people are careful, but not afraid.

You can provide this safe area of information by checking your security tactics, updating passwords and limiting access.

About the Author: Heather Legg is an independent writer who covers topics related to small business, working from home and social media.