The volume of sensitive data which call centres are responsible for storing today continues to grow, with organisations now processing a significant amount of credit card details, personal information, financial records and eTransactions every day. However, many of these companies are not considering the risks and consequences associated with failing to protect sensitive information – from breaching government regulations and financial penalties to brand damage, which can result in a loss of stakeholder and customer confidence. In these already challenging economic conditions, any one of these scenarios alone could have a critical impact on a business.
Furthermore, the recession has heightened information risk due to the large number of redundancies being made, increasing the likelihood of call centre agents misusing data or even committing data theft for financial gain before leaving the company. Call centres need to swiftly address these concerns and treat electronic security with the same consideration as physical security. While agents require some level of access to customers’ sensitive information, this process should be carefully managed in accordance with roles and responsibilities as well as levels of authorisation, all of which need to be reviewed on a regular basis.
This issue was highlighted in the FSA’s last review of overseas centres*, which found a number of financial service institutions’ overseas centres engaged in inadequate data access practices, with some firms lacking any effective system for granting staff appropriate levels of access to information. It noted that in certain cases, access rights were not being reviewed or deleted promptly when employees left an organisation.
Now more than ever before, call centres need to utilise e-policy enforcement mechanisms, which monitor the application process and data relative to individual user access, and are reviewed and amended when employees’ circumstances change. These will allow agents to gain access only to certain data and applications that are relevant to their roles and that are defined in advance by a set of policies enforced through the IT management team. Using e-policy enforcement, any call centre employee trying to download records beyond their scope of their responsibilities would be refused access. This potential breach would then be flagged automatically to IT management, so that the situation could be investigated and resolved.
Furthermore, e-policy enforcement mechanisms can also provide tracking and full compliance reporting, allowing companies to monitor every stage of a transaction and view what data is accessed to ensure agents remain compliant with their risk profile. Solutions that provide regular audits of call centre agent sessions can give companies a complete view of agents’ activities and also provide a legally admissible record. This makes suspicious activity immediately searchable and available for investigation or legal proceedings.
With so many companies looking to introduce eBusiness process improvements and regulations being continually tightened, information security will only become more vital to all organisations’ underlying business. Call centres now need to be proactive in tackling all information risks and safeguarding their customers’ information. The key to a successful call centre operation is to effectively protect data while still allowing agents to do their jobs efficiently and provide a high standard of customer service.
* FSA review of financial crime controls in offshore centres (April 2009)
About Nokia:
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki. Nokia is engaged in the manufacturing of mobile devices and in converging Internet and communications industries, with 128,445 employees in 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries
Published: Wednesday, December 2, 2009
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