Outsourcing your call center can help your business save money and improve sales development performance. But security is a major concern for some business owners – and rightfully so. For example, did you know that 60% of small companies go out of business within six months of being hacked?

Sharing data and systems with an outsourced team presents security challenges. But with planning and oversight, you can absolutely overcome these. You just need to know how to get started.

That’s why we’ve created this article. It dives into the best practices for security and sales development when outsourcing. Keep reading to learn more.

Why you need to prioritize security when outsourcing

The first thing we’re going to look at is why security is worth your attention when outsourcing. Here are three risks outsourcing poses that require special security attention.

Data protection challenges

First, it can be more difficult to protect your proprietary data when working with an outsourced team. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one is that you don’t have as much oversight over the team that’s accessing your internal systems. This makes it more difficult to ensure employees are always following the best data protection practices.

This is bad news because if a nefarious actor gets their hands on your proprietary data, they could use it as part of a ransomware attack. Or, if your in-house data becomes public, it could make its way to the competition, which may decrease your competitive advantage.

Employee risk

There’s also a risk that outsourced employees will take inadvertent actions that put your company’s security at risk. For example, they might click on links with malware or fail to follow the right protocols and leave your data vulnerable in public forums. When you’re working with an outsourced team, you have less oversight into their daily actions, which makes preventing these types of issues a more challenging endeavor.

Potential costs

When you add these risks up, you face the potential for hefty costs. Whether those costs come from a ransomware attack or lost data, your business has the potential to lose a lot if it doesn’t emphasize security while working with an outsourced team.

How to optimize your outsourced sales development security

The good news is that you can absolutely take action to minimize security risks while working with an outsourced sales development call center. You just need to be proactive about protecting your company and its data and profits. Here are four practices you can use to achieve exactly that.

Use secure software

A good first step is to make sure that the software you’re using has built-in security protection. That means platforms with integrated protection from malware and other risks.

If the software that houses your sensitive information is secure, the actions of each individual outsourced worker matter less. Sure, they could still have an impact on the security of your systems. But it likely won’t be as great.

For example, imagine that an outsourced worker accidentally clicks on a malware link. If your CRM doesn’t have built-in malware protection, you could lose all of that data or have it held hostage for massive sums. But if it does have built-in protection, it will stop the malware in its tracks, saving you time and money in the process.

Train your employees

It’s also very important to make sure your outsourced workers are trained on security risks and best practices. They should know the types of links to avoid and how to spot them. They should also know how to set strong passwords, use two-factor authentication, and take other steps to do their part to protect your valuable data.

This is difficult because you likely won’t be there to train outsourced workers directly. That’s why it’s so important to choose the right outsourcing partner. You need someone you can trust to take over the training on your behalf.

Institute secure practices

You have a key role to play in the daily security of your outsourced operations, even if you’re not there physically. You can set up whatever security practices you believe are best to protect your assets and work with an outsourcing team to implement them.

For example, you might build protective redundancies into your systems to minimize the impact that errors from employees have. You might also require certain things to access your protected systems, such as stronger passwords, two-factor authentication, or something else.

If you’re not sure what security practices you need to institute, talk with an expert. They can help to analyze your vulnerabilities and make policy recommendations based on them.

Conduct regular compliance checks

Finally, once you have the correct security practices in place, you need to make sure that your outsourced workers are following them consistently. Conducting regular security audits and compliance checks is the way to do this.

You can run those checks on your own or entrust the tasks to your outsourced team leaders. Either way, they need to be done by someone you trust to take them seriously. Otherwise, you can’t really be sure that your security policies are being implemented correctly on a daily basis.

Challenges in outsourced sales development security and how to overcome them

Now let’s take a look at some of the challenges you might encounter while working on your outsourced sales development security plan. Here are three to keep in mind as you work.

Language and time zone barriers

It can be difficult to engage with outsourcing workers and respond to problems they have in real-time due to these two issues. Language barriers may create confusion. Time zone barriers can lead to delays that may impact security.

The solution for these problems is to choose the right outsourcing team leaders. You need people within the outsourced business unit that you can trust. If you don’t have them, you need to look for a new outsourcing partner.

Lack of daily oversight

The lack of daily oversight is another challenge that can lead to security issues. The problem is that when you aren’t there to watch over your workers, you have no way of consistently verifying that they’re taking all of the security measures you expect.

The solution is, once again, choosing the right outsourcing team leaders. They can step in and provide daily oversight in your absence to ensure that your outsourced workers are doing what they can to help with security.

Effective communication with outsourced leaders

Those two points highlighted how important it is to have strong leaders you can trust with security in your outsourced business units. But it can also be challenging to communicate with those leaders sometimes.

Even when you have people that you can trust, English may be a second language. They may misinterpret some of what you say. Plus, if your outsourced team is in a completely opposite time zone, you may not be able to communicate urgent issues with leaders until it’s too late.

That’s why it can also be helpful to have someone you trust to manage your outsourcing relationships for you. Putting someone in this role can help you overcome language barriers and time zone issues more effectively so that you can improve communication and minimize security risks.

The bottom line on security and sales development when outsourcing

The bottom line of all of this is that although outsourcing can be highly effective, you need to prioritize security. Otherwise, you could be putting your critical data and potentially your company at risk.

The Cattalyst can help you out with outsourcing security. We have decades of outsourcing experience and relationships with the top firms used by major industries. We’ll help your business find an outsourcing partner that takes security as seriously as you do and can help you engage with the partner more effectively so that you’re not the only one responsible for looking after your company’s critical data.

Want to learn more? Get in touch for a free consultation. We’ll walk you through your options and tell you more about how we can help.