Be careful who you trust
From independent brokers and agents to auto body shops, Nationwide Insurance Companies works with thousands of business partners. As Nationwide's associate general counsel and chief privacy officer, Kirk Herath helps to make sure none of those third-party relationships open the Fortune 500 company up to more trouble than they are worth.
"Every person who you do business with that has your data is a potential point of failure," says Herath. "You can't create a world where you can actually do business and not have that risk looming. At the same time, you can't permit that risk to paralyze you."
Risks associated with a business partner relationship must be weighed with the potential payoff, he says. If the risk is huge, a company needs to figure out a way to reduce it – or walk away from the deal altogether.
"At the end of the day, it's a gut feeling: 'is this risk unmanageable?' If it is, then from my experience, we don't do it."
