What Is the Role of HR in Protecting Their Employees' Private Information?

Human resources and employee privacy protection

When you think about the many challenges faced as an HR professional, you might not place the protection of employees' private information at the top of the list. After all, in the grand scheme of things digital information protection is a relatively new issue faced by the HR professional.

The FBI recently reported that cyberattacks complaints have risen by as many as 4,000 a day, a 400% increase from pre-pandemic levels. As cyberattacks become more frequent, it’s important for the HR professional to place a strong emphasis on helping to safeguard employee private data.

Providing employee privacy protection is also becoming more critical each year, and it's important to understand the role that HR professionals and employees play in this vital function.

Role of HR in data privacy protection

The HR professional tends to wear many hats in the workplace. In addition to assisting with recruitment, payroll, training, and policy enforcement, the HR representative is generally a trusted employee advocate. In the often dangerous digital world we live in today, this advocacy extends to the protection of sensitive employee data.

88% of data breaches are due to human error. In addition to risks of employees themselves falling victim to cyberattacks, the potential for the organization to suffer a data breach must also be safeguarded against. Companies have a lot of personal employee information, such as social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, and more. This data must be sufficiently protected to prevent your loyal employees from having their identities stolen.

The importance of protecting employee information

When an employee falls victim to a cyberattack and has their identity stolen, it can be a harrowing experience. One small misstep exposing their personal information to cybercriminals can send their life into upheaval for months if not a year as they work to resolve their identity and privacy issues. This is an experience that, unfortunately, is becoming increasingly common.

The effects of identity theft don’t just affect the employee, either. Identity theft can have severe and long-lasting effects on a person, and this also means they are distracted during working hours. Whether they are using work hours to contact creditors, or their mind is simply on their issues rather than their work, it can be a major hindrance to productivity. This can be even more devastating if your employees work in dangerous job functions such as construction, factory work, or other hazardous situations where distractions can come with extreme consequences.

Policies and procedures for protecting employee information

Some key steps can be taken to help protect your employee’s information.

• Protecting Employee Devices: All company computers, smartphones, or tablets issued to employees should be protected. Only applications approved for business use should be installed on these devices, and company emails should be scanned for potential malicious attacks.
• Bring Your Own Device (BYOD): A BYOD program can be beneficial to your company, but there are additional risks as well. Because the employee owns the device, it cannot be locked down to protect the user from using it as they would any other personal device. However, some policies should be put in place specifically in the applications used for enterprise. Your IT team can set specific user roles for each enterprise app to help safeguard private information. It's also beneficial for an employer to enable your employees with safe WiFi and password manager tools to reduce the risk of falling victim to an identity thief.
• Protecting remote workers: Much of the workforce today is still remote and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Extra precautions should be taken to protect the remote worker’s private information from cyberattacks. One important step is to ensure that the devices used in remote work are connected to the internet via ethernet rather than WiFi when possible. Alternatively, if WiFi must be used, the employee should be using a virtual private network (VPN) to ensure their data is encrypted and secure.
• Adherence to Employee Privacy Laws: Understanding and adhering to privacy laws in your locality is one of the most important steps a business can take to protect its employees. Each state has its own privacy laws in place, and it's good to review these periodically to ensure that you are always in compliance.
• Employee Data Access Control: Access control is important both for company and employee data. By setting data access policies and procedures, you can help to block access from employees' private data from anyone who is not legally or procedurally permitted to access this information. Using advanced authentication systems will help stop unauthorized access.

Security awareness training and education

There is only so much that can be done within the organization to lock down its employees' information. Many data breaches and identity theft incidents are the results of employees inadvertently letting their personal information fall into the wrong hands. As many as 91% of cyberattacks originate as phishing scams. This staggering number is evidence that employees need cybersecurity education and should have protection solutions provided to enable them to protect their personal information.

Training employees on how to spot phishing emails and providing an overall basic education on cybersecurity topics can go a long way in protecting employee information. This training should begin with new employee orientation with an annual refresher.

Benefits for employees

According to HR Executive, 78% of employers will offer identity protection as an employee benefit in 2022. This is a great way to play a vital role in helping to protect your employees from identity theft. IDX’s comprehensive employee benefits solution provides a wide range of services to safeguard your employees’ personal information.

Identity and privacy monitoring

IDX’s identity and privacy monitoring can scan your employee’s credit reports and other online data warehouses to identify any suspicious activity indicating identity theft or privacy risks.

ForgetMe data removal

If your employee’s private information is found in any of the many nefarious online data broker websites, IDX’s solution will initiate the process of having this data removed and will continuously monitor it to ensure its prompt removal.

Dark web monitoring

When private data is stolen, it is often being sold on the dark web. IDX’s employee benefits solution will monitor the dark web for any indication of your employees' data.

Social media protection

One increasingly common way for scams and fraud to be carried out is through malicious links on social media. When you’re enrolled in IDX’s employee benefits package, social media profiles can be monitored for these malicious links so they can be eliminated.

In today’s world, private information protection is mandatory

With cyberattacks and data breaches on the rise each year, it’s important that the sensitive information of both your company and employees is protected. This can be done through a combination of policies, training, and employee benefits that provide identity and privacy protection.

Whether you are trying to curtail cyberattacks before they begin or you have suffered a data breach that you need assistance recovering from, IDX can help. Contact us today to learn more about how you can keep your business and its employees protected.