Smart solutions
7 tips for keeping your customers’ data secure
Keep your customers’ sensitive information secure with this easy guide to data protection. Learn how to back up your data, where to store it, how to control access to customer’s details and more.
October 27, 2025
5 minutes
It’s essential to take robust security measures to protect your customers’ data. Failing to do so could lead to a cyber security breach that results in severe business disruption, a hefty fine and irreversible reputational damage.
Some of the most valuable steps you can take are to back up your data offline and make it hard to tamper with, to carefully control who can access it, to keep all software updated, and to use reputable anti-virus solutions.
Your employees can be a ‘human firewall’ for your business. Training is most effective when it’s short and sharp. You should also ensure you have a clear incident response plan that everyone knows about, and practise it regularly.
Nearly half (43%) of UK businesses reported a cyber breach or attack in the past 12 months. Keeping customer data secure needs to be a top priority for every business, large and small.
If your data is compromised, you risk:
- Severe disruption to your business operations.
- A hefty fine, as GDPR legislation requires organisations to protect any personal information they hold.
- Reputational and brand damage.
So, here are seven of the most effective measures you can take to keep your customers’ data secure.
Data security isn’t just about stopping attacks – it’s about making sure your business can bounce back fast. Simple steps today can prevent costly downtime tomorrow.
1. Back up your data
Backups act as an insurance policy should the worst happen. Best practice is to keep three copies of your customer data, with at least one copy offline (where it can’t be accessed via the internet).
Ask yourself these two critical questions:
- If your data was made inaccessible by a cyber attack, how quickly would we need to restore it to resume business operations?
- How much data could you afford to lose?
Then, on a quarterly basis, test the restoration of data with your answers in mind.
Act now: Follow the 3-2-1 rule. That’s three copies of the data, stored in two different places, with at least one copy offline.
2. Make backups difficult to tamper with
If your backups can be altered or deleted by a cyber criminal, they cannot be your safety net. The best way to protect them is to use ‘immutable storage’, which is where data can be viewed but not altered or deleted.
It’s also important to keep backups on a separate network to your usual workflow processes, with different log-in credentials.
Act now: Move your customer data to an immutable storage environment. Most cloud providers, such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon, offer this as an option.
3. Control access to your data
The fewer people who can access your customer data, the less likely it is to be breached. So ensure your employees can only access the data they need to perform their roles and nothing more.
For all your logins, you should switch on multi-factor authentication (where you’re sent a verification code). And, if possible, keep a record of who has access to what data sets.
Act now: As a safety precaution, find out who can access the data of your top three customers. Then remove the access privileges of anyone who doesn’t need them to do their jobs.
4. Keep software and systems updated
Out-of-date software is a common way that cyber criminals gain access to your data. They use vulnerabilities in the code to infect your systems with a computer virus.
The most secure version of any software is nearly always the most recent, which is why it’s vital to keep everything updated. You should also ensure you have a reputable anti-virus program installed on all your devices.
Act now: Check that all your software and operating systems are up to date, turning on auto updates where possible.
5. Be alert to phishing
Phishing is another common form of attack, particularly via email. A criminal will send a message aiming to trick the recipient into downloading an infected attachment or clicking on a link to an insecure webpage.
Make sure your employees are alert to the dangers and can recognise anything that looks suspicious.
Act now: Use a filter to block malicious emails and suspicious web content, most reputable anti-virus programs will offer this.
6. Train your people
Your employees can be your weakest security link. But if they’re well trained, they can also become your human firewall, offering robust protection against cyber attacks.
Rather than overwhelming them with a long course they may soon forget, it’s best to offer training in smaller, regular doses. That way, security will always remain top of mind.
Ensure the training covers the importance of protecting customer data and how to reduce the risks of a breach, and then track employee participation as this will provide you with insights on areas needing regular refreshers. This helps close knowledge gaps.
Act now: Create a learning plan for your employees. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) offers a 'top tips for staff’ learning quiz. Or, let us do the work for you. BT’s Security Awareness Training combines bite-sized training content with real world phishing simulations, making training simple to deploy and easy to manage.
7. Build an incident response plan
Should the worst happen, the sooner you act, the less damage is likely to be caused. Therefore, it’s essential to have a plan in place so everyone knows what to do and when.
Act now: Create an incident response plan and practise it regularly (at least quarterly). Read our article on incident response for more details.
Key takeaways
If you only remember three things, make them these:
- Regularly back up your critical data offline and make it hard for anyone to tamper with.
- Control who is able to access your data. The fewer people who can, the safer it’s likely to be.
- Train your people on the importance of data security and to be alert to the dangers of phishing attacks.
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