Introduction
Every individual nowadays has an insurance or has invested their wealth in the market. Most of the time, these investments are handled by insurance agents or wealth managers. In order to transact for the services the customers share their financial data, Government IDs, , employment details, and the bank details. Although, data is stored by the companies, wealth managers and insurance agents too have their customer data for upselling and cross-selling of services. While it is a mandate for companies to have adequate data security measures to be compliant with the regulations, individuals dealing with these data too need to be cognizant of data protection laws.
Despite the financial sector having the highest rate of digital transformation, cybercrimes continue to shackle the industry. In the first half of 2020 itself, there were 36 billion records that were stolen by data breaches. The primary factors that drive cyberattack on the financial sector are collection of massive amounts of customer’s financial transactions data, daily exchange of data and finances, and deployment of technologies to store customer data in accordance with the regulations exposing the data during migration. These drivers are extended to the individuals too when they store customer data. Hackers pry online to attack and regain data for financial benefits and identity theft.
Data that is Targeted by Hackers
Insurance agents and wealth managers’ most important data is financial and personal details. For example, you get an insurance policy from an insurance agent. You will have to provide all the personal information like name, address, phone number, social security number or government id, marital status, and much more.
Apart from that, credit card details are also shared with the insurance company to make the payments. All these details are critical and sensitive and are what the cyber attackers are after. In the hands of the wrong person, these details can harm and even lead to financial losses and loss of the customer’s trust.
The wealth managers too need accurate data of the customers with respect to their PII (personal identifiable information), financial transactions and taxation details to provide them with the apt offerings. Additionally for Mutual funds and bonds, they need bank details or credit card details for auto transactions. Due to the sensitive nature of the information, the data is valuable for hackers who use sophisticated technology to attack the individuals.
While most data breach threats are from the inside, hackers also use spam or malicious emails and links for these managers to click on. When they click the unknown link, the hackers can access all the confidential data and misuse them.
Building a Data Encryption Strategy
Enabling an appropriate data encryption strategy involves taking a stock of the entire workflow and identifying the areas of concerns. To build a comprehensive data encryption roadmap, wealth managers and insurance agents need to reach out to their parent companies and understand the regulatory framework they need to comply with. Having aligned to the regulations, managers need to identify the assets involved. Post which they need to recognize the threats and vulnerability associated with the assets. Once the risks are identified the wealth managers can then implement a data encryption software to safeguard their customer’s sensitive information. As wealth managers and insurance agents may not be technically advanced compared to their parent companies, you need a simple solution. Cypherix’s Cryptainer Pro is a data encryption software that comes with a drag and drop interface. You can protect your customer data by creating virtual disk that can only be accessed with the secret key generated by you. Thus, even if hackers attack the system or there is a physical theft, your data remains secured.
How Cryptainer Pro Safeguards Data
As a wealth manager and insurance agent the data is stored in various methods from the system to emails to removable drives, Cryptainer Pro is adept in protecting the customer’s data from all these storages using Cryptography solution. The data encryption software supports Blowfish and AES which are regulatory norms of data encryption in certain countries. Thus, using the software you become compliant with the laws of the land.
The customer data can be available in the form of excels, word, photos, or PDFs. Cryptainer Pro gives you the flexibility to encrypt any and every format of data. The data encryption takes only a minute irrespective of the data size, saving the precious time wealth manager and insurance agents can use for their operational workflow.
With Cryptainer Pro, you can work on multiple virtual disks simultaneously without compromising the productivity of your system. Additionally, in case of data store in disks, USBs, CD, or any other removable media, you can encrypt this data as well using the data encryption software offered by Cypherix. The data encryption software works on all kinds of Windows and has an easy-to-use interface which lets you use the folders in a simple drag and drop manner. Wealth managers and insurance agents can even store their customer’s data on the cloud by encrypting the vault before and then uploading on the cloud. Those with the secret key can only access the data. Thus, your customers’ data is secured between you and the customer.
Verdict
Avoiding the misuse of customers’ data should be the top priority of financial advisors, and data encryption is the only way to do it. It is necessary to ensure that the data is secure even if there is a breach. Not investing in a data encryption software could lead to customer loyalty loss and attract considerable fines for agents. Cypherix’s Cryptainer Pro has an unbreakable algorithm which secures the data within the vault similar to a security locker of the bank which you cannot access in the absence of the key. Hence, using data encryption software wealth managers and insurance agents can protect the customer’s data. Data encryption ensures that no matter the case, customers’ data remain secure and unreadable by anyone but the authorized users.
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