Friday, July 02, 2004

Article: Breach of trust -- it's about keeping customers

This is a slightly older article, but I just happened across it today. It highlights something that I try to drill into my clients. Protecting customer personal information is not just about compliance, it is about keeping customers.

Breach Of Trust > May 3, 2004:

Breach Of Trust May 3, 2004
Data breaches are a constant threat and put companies in danger of losing their most valuable asset: customer trust
By George V. Hulme

When Christina Guilbert got a call from her bank in March about an attempt to steal money from her account, she was alarmed--and suspicious. How could someone access her account from an automated teller machine in England when her ATM card was in her home in Boston? Was the caller really a bank representative or a thief fabricating a story in an attempt to get account information from her? "With all of the scams on the Internet, I knew they could try the same thing using the phone," Guilbert says.

Guilbert had the bank rep confirm his identity by providing information on a recent transaction on her account. The bank blocked the attempted withdrawal, but Guilbert, who works at a public-relations firm, still doesn't know how the overseas thief got her account information. Guilbert's faith in doing any kind of business online has been destroyed. "I was concerned about shopping online before; now I won't shop online at all," she says. ...

Full text here ...

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