Importance of Privacy and Confidentiality in Business Transcription

Data is the fuel for today’s digital economy. As much as 90 percent of that data generated on daily basis is unstructured data. In addition to web pages, blogs posts, and social media content, unstructured data generated by businesses include audio and video content such as meetings, surveys, conferences, presentations, webinars, interviews, surveys, focus groups, and call center recordings. Recording and documenting these activities and events using business transcription services can serve many purposes, including record keeping, training, collaboration, compliance, and facilitating remote work. Transcripts also offer benefits such as accessibility, improved SEO, and analysis. However, given the escalating cyber threats, safeguarding the privacy of information through audio or video files shared with third party service providers like transcription companies is a crucial concern.

Let’s first look into why businesses need to protect the privacy and confidentiality of their data.

Importance of Business Data Security

Business data security is of utmost importance to protect sensitive information, comply with regulations, maintain trust, ensure business continuity, and gain a competitive advantage.

• Protection of sensitive information: Businesses collect, store and transmit a vast amount of sensitive information such as financial data, customer information, and intellectual property. They need to ensure that this information is secure to prevent theft, data breaches, and other forms of cyber-attacks.

• Compliance with regulations: Many industries have regulations that require businesses to protect certain types of information. For instance, privacy laws and data protection laws aim to protect people’s personal data from being exploited. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in legal consequences, financial penalties, and reputational damage.

• Maintaining trust: Customers and clients trust businesses to keep their sensitive information safe. Businesses collect a lot of digital information about customers including location-tracking and other kinds of personally identifiable information. They use this data to get insights about consumer’s pain points and unmet needs, and develop new products and services, as well as to personalize advertising and marketing. However, a survey by McKinsey revealed that consumers are becoming cautious about the types of data they share-and with whom. Therefore, data security is crucial for businesses to maintain trust with their customers. A breach of data can cause loss of trust, which can be difficult to regain.

• Continuity of business operations: Cyber-attacks and data breaches can cause significant disruptions to business operations. Data loss, system downtime, and the cost of recovery can impact business continuity, leading to lost revenue, missed opportunities, and other consequences.

• Competitive advantage: Businesses that demonstrate a strong commitment to data security can gain a competitive advantage. Customers and clients are more likely to trust businesses that have a reputation for keeping their information safe.

To ensure the security of data, both small firms and large enterprises must implement protective measures. Additionally, they should only share their data with third-party service providers that can ensure the privacy of the information.

Business Transcription Outsourcing – Choose the Right Partner

Cybersecurity breaches continue to surge. The average data breach cost is also rising and increased from $4.24 million in 2021 to $4.35 million in 2022, according to IBM. This represents a 12.7% increase from the 2020 average cost of $3.86 million. When outsourcing business transcription, choosing the right partner is crucial to protect data confidentiality, comply with regulations, maintain reputation, manage risks, and protect intellectual property. Privacy and confidentiality in business transcription is essential the following reasons:

• Confidentiality: Business transcription often involves sensitive information such as financial data, trade secrets, and personal information. Maintaining the confidentiality of this information is crucial to prevent unauthorized access and misuse.

• Risk management: Cyber threats such as hacking and data breaches can have severe consequences for businesses. Ensuring that transcription data is secure helps to reduce the risk of such threats.

• Reputation: Data breaches can cause a loss of trust with customers, employees, and stakeholders. Secure business transcription helps to maintain trust and a positive reputation.

• Intellectual Property Protection: Business records sent for transcription may involve proprietary information such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Ensuring that this information is secure is crucial to prevent infringement and protect intellectual property rights.

Businesses need to comply with many regulations to protect certain types of information. Choosing a digital transcription service that can protect their data is crucial to avoid legal consequences, financial penalties, and reputational damage.

Here are some steps to help you choose the right business transcription company:

• Choose a reliable service provider: When signing up with a new transcription company, conducting a thorough background check is crucial. Check the transcription service provider’s testimonials and previous experience. Go through as many online reviews as possible on different platforms. Look for details regarding their privacy practices in the reviews from current clients. Honest and descriptive feedback can help you evaluate the quality of their services and make an informed decision.

• Evaluate their data security measures: Reliable digital transcription agencies will have several data security measures in place to protect confidential information, including:
  • Encryption to ensure that any sensitive information can be read only by authorized individuals.
  • Strict access controls to prevent unauthorized access to confidential data. This includes limiting access to sensitive data and implementing multi-factor authentication.
  • Secure transmission to ensure that all data is transmitted securely using methods such as secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) and virtual private networks (VPNs).
  • Secure storage to store all data in a safe location, implementing backup systems, and ensuring that physical storage areas are secure.
  • Employee training, which is crucial to ensuring that employees understand the importance of data security and know how to handle sensitive data.
  • Regular audits to ensure that security measures are in place and functioning effectively.

Last but not least, before sharing your audio and video files, check the transcription service provider’s website URL and login portal to ensure that you are dealing with the legitimate transcription service provider. Make sure the URL starts with HTTPS – the protocol for secure communication over the internet. HTTPS provides website authentication and protects the privacy and integrity of data sent while in transit. By using HTTPS, websites can ensure that their users’ sensitive information is protected from fraudulent activity and interception by malicious actors.

• Sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement: Signing a non-disclosure agreement with the business transcription company will ensure that they are legally bound to protect your confidential information.

When choosing a business transcription company, make sure they have encryption, access controls, secure storage, and secure transmission, and can ensure data security and confidentiality to meet industry standards.