By STELLAMARIS ASHINZE

A global technology company, Zoho Corporation, has highlighted four ways to ensure that business software providers were protecting one’s data.

Andrew Bourne, Regional Manager, Africa, Zoho Corporation, said in a statement that in the past few years, privacy breaches around the world had made technology users conscious about the way their data was being used.

Bourne said that to ensure that one did not get dragged into the trap of software breaches, one should do the following.

He said that one should ensure that business providers did not use a third party tracker; look for regulatory compliance, regular communication around data protection and honest about revenue streams.

According to him, many business software providers use third-party trackers that allow them to study their website visitors.

“However, the apps they used to track them, they use that data to sell ads. This is known as adjunct surveillance.

“With the upcoming macOS Big Sur update, it will be easier for users to know which websites are tracking them.

“One of the most powerful tools any organisation has at its disposal when it comes to data protection is user education.

“The data and security landscape is, after all, evolving constantly and your business software provider needs to be on top of that,” he said.

Bourne said that if your provider was educating you on the latest data threats, it was a powerful demonstration that it cared about you keeping your data secure.

According to him, you only need to look at the growth of privacy-centric products like search engine DuckDuckGo to see how mainstream privacy awareness has become.

He said that data privacy issues did not just affect private individuals, they could have a massive impact on businesses, with the average data breach costing in excess of 3.8 million dollars.

Bourne said that surveillance companies, which relied heavily on showing ads to survive, collected user information even from adjunct properties (such as websites of service providers) without users’ permission.

The regional manager said that B2B companies frequently used products and services from these surveillance companies, giving them access to their users’ data.

He, however, said that there was the need to ensure to apply the four ways to ensure that the business software providers did not tamper with their data. (NAN)