Hackers are Targeting HR Data

The business landscape has shifted to be primarily digital, and most businesses (even small companies) operate online and leverage the cost-saving and feature-packed benefits of using advanced software programs in the cloud. Likewise, this is also where a company’s data lives as well.

This shift has also ushered in a new era of necessary security protections to keep systems, data, and full businesses safe from cybercrime. Cyber Security is a huge area of focus in the software space, as vendors strive to create systems that are beneficial to businesses and secure from known threats. 

News of security breaches, hacks, and stolen data pilfered for fraudulent intent makes the headlines quite often. But hackers are always tweaking their tactics to get around the security measures being put in place against recognized threats and data-stealing attempts. There’s a rising trend in data breaches that specifically target Human Resources data and HR software systems. This isn’t entirely surprising given that the employee information that companies store for their records is the very data that a cybercriminal would need to commit fraud – names, birthdates, social security numbers, addresses, salaries, phone numbers, etc. 

A security breach can be devastating for a business, but when it’s personal employee data that is exposed or stolen, it can also mean devastation for your team members when that compromised information is used to steal identities or perpetuate fraud through fake credit cards or other accounts set up falsely with the stolen data. 

You not only need to secure your HR systems to keep your company safe from damaging data breaches, but you also must protect this information because it exposes your employees to life-altering acts of fraud and identity theft through stolen or exposed personal details. 

Protecting your HR systems and the data they house is imperative to the security of your business and essential to keeping private employee information safe from hacks and other cybercrime intent on fraud. Your organization can take these measures to increase your security and ensure your HR data stays as safe as possible in the modern age of digital business. 

Protecting your sensitive HR data begins with using a sophisticated solution that will not only help you store and organize all of your employees’ information but also protect it against malicious cyberattacks. Modern HCM solutions are filled with great tools to help you manage all of your HR duties much more efficiently, but they’re also equipped with updated security protections and measures that older systems may not have (and that manual data storage processes will not offer at all). 

Securing your HR systems with passwords is critical, and while it may seem like a simple step, it’s often where employees can create unnecessary risk to your solution. You should educate your employees on how to create strong passwords or passphrases that are random and can not easily be guessed. Passwords should be changed frequently, and employees should be required to use unique passwords for every system they access for their work. 

Modern HCM systems will typically offer access-level controls that you can use to control how employees access your human resources data. It’s important to only give access to employees who need information for their work. Limiting who can access employee HR information and how they can use it will help protect data from internal breaches and also reduce the risk of cyber fraud by limiting the entry points to your systems and the data they contain. 

Another area of cyber security that many companies neglect is employee education and training. Security is no longer just the job of the IT department or a function of the software programs your teams use each day for their jobs. Security is everyone’s responsibility and your employees should understand exactly what they should (and should not) be doing to keep company and personal data as secure as possible. 

About Wheelhouse

Like what you just read? At Wheelhouse, we are passionate about all things software, and our specialty is connecting software buyers to a solution that perfectly matches their needs. Please visit our Human Resources software page for a complete list of all the solutions we have on offer.