How to make sure your HR data is secure?
Protecting sensitive employee data for any HR department should be a top priority. However, despite increasing cyber threats, many organizations still have inadequate safeguards for securing human resources information. By utilizing best practices around access controls, infrastructure security, and testing defenses, companies can drastically improve HR data protection. This article will cover techniques like two-factor authentication (2FA), cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) compliance, and in-depth penetration testing. Follow these comprehensive guidelines, and your organization can feel confident that HR data remains secure from unauthorized access or disclosure.
Rising Frequency and Impact of HR Data Breaches
HR teams store highly sensitive employee information related to pay, health, performance, and personal background details. Unfortunately, breaches involving HR records have risen in frequency by over 100% from 2020 to 2021, according to Nonprofit Security. Unlike customer data, a single HR record contains all the details needed for identity theft and other cybercrime. Compliance fines can also be steep - Singapore's Personal Data Protection Commission fined an HR software company $1 million in 2021 for a breach exposing the personal information of 20,000 individuals.
Structuring HR Data Management to Align with PDPA
Singapore enacted the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) in 2012 to establish data security and consent requirements for private information, including HR records. Under PDPA guidelines:
- Consent - Employees should expressly consent to the collection and usage of HR data
- Purpose Limitation - Only use HR information for stated purposes
- Access Limitation - Restrict access to only staff requiring it
- Transfer Limitation - Get consent before transferring data externally
- Accountability - Assign responsible personnel for PDPA compliance
HR teams should inventory all systems holding employee data and configure settings around data minimization, access controls, and consent to satisfy PDPA protections. Enforcing least privilege access and implementing periodic consent refreshers are examples of alignment best practices. Structured properly, HR information systems will have PDPA protections baked into the handling of sensitive employee records. But additional defenses are still essential.
AWS Cloud Benefits for Security and Availability
Maintaining physical servers to host HR data on-premise at the workplace has drawbacks around security and uptime. By hosting HR data on-premise, you are responsible for ensuring the security and uptime of the servers, which can be a complex and expensive task. Utilizing cloud infrastructure like Amazon Web Services (AWS) mitigates these issues through state-of-the-art data centers and redundancy capabilities outpacing on-premise options. According to AWS, advantages include:
- 99.95% uptime across data centers over the last 2 decades
- Multiple redundant servers across availability zones
- Encrypted data transmission and storage
- Granular access controls and activity monitoring
- Regular audits validating security posture
Adopting SaaS HR platforms built atop cloud infrastructure makes the most sense for small teams as it provides better performance and prevents risks linked to physical location. Cloud infrastructure is designed to provide high availability, scalability, and reliability, leading to better performance than on-premises solutions. Additionally, cloud infrastructure can help prevent risks linked to physical location, such as fire, flooding, and having physical access to the server and data. This is because cloud infrastructure is designed to be highly resilient and secure, with multiple layers of redundancy and security measures in place.
But larger organizations may still want customized software - constructing on AWS aligns with security best practices in these cases. Correctly configuring cloud access controls, encryption policies, and privileged user monitoring lets AWS do the heavy lifting for HR data protection.
Why Penetration Tests Are Essential
While preventative measures like access controls, and AWS harden security, confirmation systems work as intended comes from penetration testing. Pen tests involve ethical hackers actively probing networks and applications to uncover weaknesses defenders may miss. By launching simulated attacks, penetration testers validate whether flaws exist, allowing unauthorized data access or system control.
Industry recommendations call for performing comprehensive penetration tests annually plus interim tests whenever significant new capabilities or infrastructure are added. For HR systems holding highly sensitive data, engaging a reputable third-party penetration testing firm should be standard practice after making major changes but also on an ongoing basis, such as quarterly.
Beyond scheduled pen tests, monitoring usage patterns and logs from HR systems allows for identifying unauthorized access attempts. If penetration testers entered via an overlooked database port, similar attack markers may show in logs, indicating additional hardening is required. Between vigorous penetration testing and continuous log audits, organizations gain assurance HR data security controls remain effective against both known and new attack avenues.
Additional Steps for Securing HR Data
Beyond core controls around access management, cloud infrastructure, and penetration testing, supplementary best practices further reinforce HR data protections, including:
- Encrypt local data stores: Expand encryption beyond just cloud-based data stores to also protect local cache copies, backups, and databases holding HR information using platform-specific data encryption capabilities native to underlying operating systems or database technologies.
- Employee security training: Establish mandatory cybersecurity and data privacy education for all personnel but with HR-tailored examples on properly managing passwords, identifying social engineering ploys, and handling sensitive documents.
- Strong password policies: Demand complex multi-factor passphrase credentials that rotate every 90 days. Set complexity and rotation rules programmatically through identity management systems.
- Privileged access management: Provision specialized monitoring, access controls, and auditing mechanisms to privileged users like database administrators or payroll processors able to access wide information.
- Air-gapped encrypted backups: Maintain isolated, offline copies of critical HR databases protected physically and through encryption, along with restoration testing. Such backups facilitate recovery from ransomware or destructive cyber incidents.
- Continuous auditing: Expand beyond just penetration testing to embrace continuous monitoring, detecting anomalies in usage or attempted access that may signify insider risks. Alert personnel to investigate unusual activity.
No security program will ever be 100% impenetrable forever. However, by correctly implementing controls around access, infrastructure strategy, penetration testing, backups, and auditing, enterprises can make HR data breaches extremely difficult for cybercriminals while ensuring systems comply with essential regulations like Singapore's PDPA. Staying vigilant and dedicating appropriate resources toward HR security represents a major step every organization should take to keep sensitive employee information safe in today's threat landscape.
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