What is the state of your association’s data security? Do you practice safe data security practices to reduce risks and protect your member data?
If you don’t, your association runs the risk of (at worst) a data breach, and (at best) mismatched member data. Neither option boosts member confidence nor inspires new members to join your organization. Data exposure can also cost your association a hefty price tag. IBM reports the average cost of a data breach was $4.45 million, with 51% of organizations planning to increase security investments this year.
Don’t risk your association’s data and put member confidence on the line. Protect your organization with strong data security practices.
Why do associations need to prioritize data security?
In an age when data is a form of digital currency, security is an essential component of your business strategy. Safeguarding your member data is a critical step in showing that your association is reputable.
Protecting your association’s data security is important for the following reasons:
- It protects your members’ privacy.
- It preserves your organization’s reputation and instills confidence.
- It establishes your association as one with a strong code of ethics.
- It helps stop data breaches before they can start and minimizes the chance of future ones.
Without sufficient data security protocols in place, your organization risks accruing costs and fines associated with breached data, plus legal fees and reparations to rectify the harm done to your association members. A severe data breach could cost your organization its reputation, facilitate countless fees and fines, and potentially even cause job losses.
How your association can protect and secure member data
Safeguarding member data requires a solid data security plan that keeps up with the ever-evolving nature of cybersecurity threats. Your association management software (AMS) should do the following:
- Provide the information and insight necessary to grow your data security approach.
- Include a series of sophisticated authentication processes and data recovery options.
- Offer constant reliability.
- Strictly adhere to data privacy laws, such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).
- Provide users with options regarding their data.
Since new data security threats are constantly being created and exploited, it’s essential to choose an AMS that updates frequently. Your AMS should update regularly to combat new security threats and upgrade automatically so none of your systems are left behind.
6 ways to protect and secure member data with your AMS
But how do you ensure your member data is secure and your AMS continues to grow with your organization? To help you decide whether your AMS has enough precautions to secure your member data, we’ve developed a list of association data security best practices.
Look for these six factors in an AMS to protect your member data, reduce risk, and guarantee a reliable system performance:
1. Transparency.
Your AMS should provide you with insight, information, and documentation into its system performance and security to promote your trust and confidence in its service.
Nimble AMS, has a Known Issues List to provide status updates on any challenges you might experience while using the platform. There is even a “This Affects Me Button” so your organization can self-report issues and receive quick status updates. Additionally, Salesforce offers live status details on its service availability, performance, security, privacy, and compliance. The Salesforce site includes security updates on any recent phishing, malware, or intrusion attempts, so you can easily learn the state of your data at any time.
2. Best practices for data security.
To prevent unauthorized access, your AMS should support data security best practices, including two-factor authentication, login IP ranges, adjustable session timeout thresholds, custom domains, and the latest authentication and encryption protocol Transport Layer Security (TLS) for browser encryption.
Nimble AMS, built on the Salesforce platform, prioritizes data security and compliance. With our in-house Security and Compliance team, staffed by a team of security experts, we run a strong information security and risk management program to meet security and data privacy regulations and expectations. Additionally, Nimble AMS is the only AMS built-on Salesforce to proactively go through Salesforce Security Review for every seasonal release.
3. Comprehensive user permissions.
Your AMS should allow only your organization to access its data and let your administrator restrict access so that your employees can view and edit only the data they should be able to access in the system, depending on their role with your organization.
CALL OUT: Nimble AMS, built on Salesforce, allows your administrator to set up organization, department, and individual levels and configure what each can see and do. Permissions can be set for the application, tab, page, object, field, and more.
4. Data recovery.
To safeguard your data, your AMS should protect your data from simple storage errors, catastrophic failures, and everything in between. Also, your AMS should not hold your data hostage.
With Nimble AMS, you can rest assured your data is always protected. Because Nimble AMS is built on Salesforce, your data will be preserved on a rotating schedule of incremental and full backups, allowing for recovery should the need arise. Disaster recovery mechanisms use real-time replication to disk at each data center and near real-time data replication between the production data center and the disaster recovery center. You can always export your organization’s data when you need it, without restriction.
5. Stability and reliability.
As your association grows and collects more data, your AMS should be able to handle spikes in traffic to your online community and member portal, remaining available when you and your members need it. The most secure AMS maintains compliance certifications and attestations to validate their security.
Because Nimble AMS is built on Salesforce, your organization can rely on Salesforce’s long-term track record of 99.9+ percent uptime. Should the need ever arise, your data is backed up to a redundant data center. With Nimble AMS, you get access to one free Salesforce sandbox so you can test configurations and integrations without compromising your production environments.
6. Seamless upgrades and continuous delivery.
Your AMS should offer a continuous stream of upgrades and innovation, so your organization is always using the latest in technological advances, without hassle or extra costs.
Nimble AMS and Salesforce provide your association with six free upgrades per year (three via the Salesforce platform, and three via Nimble AMS) to ensure you’re always using the latest and greatest technology. Because Nimble AMS is a true cloud-based system, you’ll receive these upgrades seamlessly.
How to safeguard your member data with Nimble AMS
Nimble AMS’ innovative data security solutions are constantly evolving to protect your member data from future security threats. Built on Salesforce, Nimble AMS leverages excellent security tools and adheres to the security suggestions put forward by the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). To better adhere to these regulations, Nimble AMS has created several features to help your members feel more secure and up to date. Our security features offer live status details on service availability and allow you to anonymize individuals, set consent preferences, and view data export requests.
At Nimble AMS, we’re committed to providing you with the best security practices available. Our software is consistently in line with updated security standards and strives to go above and beyond regulation compliance. As a company that is always improving upon our product, Nimble AMS issues three stress-free updates that automatically install every four months. Nimble AMS’s frequent upgrades allow you to always have updated software, and they are automatically installed.
