Home » General

Google sets example in medical records storage plan

20 May 2008 268 views 2 Comments

Welcome to the blog about web services and tools for website and blog owners.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our Newsletter. Members get exclusive offers and deals. Thanks for visiting!

Medical rcords doctorI am still amazed when I read stories that state thousands of users have credit card information leaked onto the Internet. Especially when it is clear that the reason they were leaked was because there was little concern for the security of the data collected.

In today’s Internet, many of us web site owners store data about our users and those who subscribe to our content. While there are many applications and solutions developed and pre-packaged to make life easier, the truly good applications put a large amount of effort into securing that user data in a secure environment.

This effort should not be discounted by any means. I thought it important to discuss the aspects of ensuring that your users data stays secure from prying eyes on the Internet. What sparked my interest in this topic was the recent news published by the Boston Globe, “Google unveils medical records storage plan“.

This story offers a great example of keeping data secure because it uses a basis that is dear to all of our hearts, our personal medical records. One quote that helps set the tone for maintaining users data is a quote from a Medical professional in the article that states, “We believe that patients should be the stewards of their own data”.

In the same way, we as Webmasters should apply the same level of care and concern about our users data, letting them be the “stewards of their own data”. Some simple rules that can be applied when considering the storage of our users data can be:

1.) Make our policies and procedures for maintaining and storing a users data clear to our users

2.) Provide a clear and easy method for a user to remove their data from our systems

3.) Securing our data systems from outside hackers and data thieves by storing our users data in a secured environment. (i.e. – Not on a laptop we carry around with us everywhere)

By taking care of our users data, and offering it the same level of concern we would to our own medical records, will certainly help us as Webmasters build credibility with our own user communities.

No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post)

Related posts:

  1. Wordpress Security: Google to launch new tool Earlier th
  2. Google to Launch Interest-based Advertising The web se
  3. Google Chrome not there yet We finally
  4. Does Rewriting Dynamic URLs help SEO The battle
  5. Adding a Search Engine to Your Website As you dev

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

PoorFairGoodVery goodExcellent (No Ratings Yet)
Loading ... Loading ...

2 Comments »

  • Martin said:

    I couldn’t agree more. All webmasters who collect user data for any reason take on a serious responsibility when they do so.

    That’s why, for me, I will always outsource the storage of user data to organisations that are much more specialised than I am in that field – for example my autoresponder service provider, my payment processor and others.

    Cheers,

    Martin.

  • links for 2008-05-21 « WealthyDragon said:

    [...] Google sets example in medical records storage plan An important message for any webmasters who collect and store customer data – it’s not a responsibility to be taken lightly! (tags: internet-marketing customer-data-storage data-security) No Comments Leave a Commenttrackback addressThere was an error with your comment, please try again. name (required)email (will not be published) (required)url [...]

Leave your response!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.

CommentLuv Enabled