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Nine Ways Casinos Can Avoid a Data Breach

[Guest Post]

With data breaches in various industries becoming all too common, it’s important for every business to be aware of how they can avoid losing personal data, and that includes casinos!

If you run or work for a casino, then you’ll be well aware that you hold plenty of personal data, whether it belongs to your partners, employees, or customers. No matter what this data includes, one thing is for certain – it needs to be kept secure and away from unauthorized third parties.

The consequences of a data breach are likely to be severe for all parties. Affected individuals will be at risk of identity theft and financial loss, seeking data breach compensation as a result, while your casino will suffer severe reputational damage and face action from the authorities.

So, in this post, we’ve put together some handy tips your casino can follow to ensure that you’re able to avoid a breach and keep the data you store as secure as possible.

9 Tips for Casinos to Avoid a Data Breach

1. Understand Your Obligations

First things first, if your casino handles personal data, you’ll need to be clued up on your legal obligations. There are a number of different laws and legislation relating to data security, so you need to be sure that you have all the information you need to make the right decisions.

It’s also important to make sure that you refer to the correct laws for different countries. If your casino operates across multiple jurisdictions, then data security laws are likely to differ, so you’ll need to be aware of what the differences are and how this might affect your approach.

2. Create a Data Security Policy

Once your legal obligations have been clarified, your casino should create a data security policy that every employee can refer back to. This policy should cover all of the practices, processes, and procedures that should be followed while your casino is being operated. This way, the chances of a mistake being made can be greatly reduced.

You may find that a quick Google search brings up plenty of results for data security policy templates, but this might not be the most sensible approach. These templates may not be suited to your casino’s individual circumstances, so it’s likely to be more beneficial to create a tailored policy from scratch.

3. Have Up-to-Date Security Software

If your casino regularly handles sensitive personal data, then you’ll want to install up-to-date security and anti-virus software. Having these in place will help to protect any data that is stored on your casino’s digital devices and protect any weak points that cybercriminals would otherwise attempt to exploit.

You may already have security software installed, but you need to be sure that it’s been recently updated. This process is normally automatic, but you may want to double-check if this is the case.

4. Conduct Frequent Risk Assessments 

Risk assessments should be carried out frequently to ensure that your casino maintains high levels of data security. It’s good practice to complete assessments on a monthly, or weekly, basis, scanning your existing procedures and identifying any potential issues.

This provides you with the chance to identify a threat at an early stage, and before any cybercriminals do, so you can rectify it before it develops into a data breach.

5. Staff Training

Data breaches are frequently the result of human error. So, this suggests that one of the best ways of minimizing the risk of a data breach is to train any staff who are responsible for handling data so they’re fully aware of their responsibilities.

If the employees at your casino are provided with the tools and skills to identify security risks, safety and privacy will always be at the forefront of their minds when they’re carrying out their daily duties.

6. Automate Certain Systems and Processes

To further reduce the chances of a human error leading to a data breach, your casino should look to automate as many processes as possible.

Automating processes isn’t as complicated as it might sound, either. They could be as simple as have filters in inbound emails or having procedures that require employees to periodically change their passwords.

7. Encryptions

Encryption is essential if your casino handles private data. Encryption helps to protect sensitive data, preventing access to certain documents or emails without access to an associated encryption key.

This means that, if an employee’s device is lost or stolen, or a sensitive email is sent to the wrong person, the data will remain inaccessible.

8. User Authorisation

To improve data security, it’s good practice to only give employees at your casino access to files and documents that would be necessary for them to complete their jobs. As an example, providing a temporary intern with easy access to high-level documents containing customer data could pose a potential security risk.

To counter this, your casino should implement multiple levels of authentication or systems that log users out if they’ve been inactive for a certain amount of time.

9. Set Up a Sensible Response Plan

Unfortunately, even if you’ve set up all of the mentioned security features, and your staff is well trained, there is always going to be a small possibility that a data breach will still occur. That’s why your casino should have a detailed response plan set up, so everybody knows exactly what to do if the worst does happen.

Being able to respond quickly and efficiently to a data breach could mean the difference between the consequences of a breach being relatively minor, or potentially catastrophic for your casino. 

Do You Have Any Further Concerns About a Casino Data Breach?

In this post, we’ve discussed some of the most important pointers you should keep in mind if you want to prevent your casino from suffering a data breach. While data breaches are always going to be a potential threat, these tips should help to ensure that any data your casino stores is kept secure.

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