A Glossary of Key Terms in Keap Data Security & Encryption

In today’s fast-paced HR and recruiting landscape, safeguarding sensitive candidate and employee data isn’t just a best practice—it’s a critical imperative. With platforms like Keap serving as central hubs for managing interactions, applications, and personal information, understanding the terminology around data security and encryption is paramount. This glossary provides HR and recruiting professionals with clear, actionable definitions of essential terms, helping you navigate compliance, mitigate risks, and ensure the integrity of your data within the Keap ecosystem and beyond. A robust data security strategy protects your organization’s reputation, maintains trust, and ensures operational continuity in an increasingly digital world.

Access Control

Access control refers to the selective restriction of access to a resource. In the context of Keap, this means defining who within your organization can view, edit, or delete specific data points, records, or automations. For HR and recruiting teams, implementing robust access control is crucial to prevent unauthorized individuals from seeing sensitive candidate information (like background check results or salary expectations) or employee performance reviews. Keap allows for user permissions and roles, which, when configured correctly, ensure that only designated personnel (e.g., hiring managers, HR administrators) have the appropriate level of access to relevant data, thereby minimizing internal data breach risks and maintaining compliance with privacy regulations.

Cloud Security

Cloud security encompasses the technologies, policies, controls, and services that protect cloud-based infrastructures, applications, and data. Keap operates as a cloud-based CRM and marketing automation platform, meaning its services and your data are hosted on remote servers managed by Keap and its underlying cloud providers. For HR and recruiting professionals, understanding cloud security involves trusting Keap’s commitment to protecting its data centers, networks, and software from threats. While Keap handles the infrastructure security, your team is responsible for secure practices within your Keap account, such as strong passwords, multi-factor authentication, and proper access controls to leverage the inherent security of the cloud environment effectively.

Compliance

Compliance, in the realm of data security, refers to adhering to a set of laws, regulations, and industry standards designed to protect sensitive information. For HR and recruiting professionals using Keap, this typically involves navigating regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and sometimes industry-specific standards. Ensuring compliance means that your data handling practices within Keap—from collecting candidate data via web forms to storing it, processing it through automations, and eventually deleting it—meet the legal requirements of your operating regions. Failure to comply can result in significant fines, reputational damage, and loss of trust. Keap provides features that support compliance, but the ultimate responsibility for compliant processes rests with the user organization.

Consent Management

Consent management is the process of obtaining, recording, and managing individuals’ permissions for collecting, processing, and storing their personal data. For HR and recruiting, this is particularly vital when dealing with candidate applications, talent pools, and marketing communications. Within Keap, consent management involves ensuring that candidates explicitly agree to your data privacy policy, to receive job alerts, or to have their resume stored for future opportunities. Effective consent management requires clear communication about data usage, an easy way for individuals to grant or revoke consent, and a verifiable record of their choices, which Keap’s tagging and custom field features can help track.

Data Backup & Recovery

Data backup involves creating copies of data that can be used to restore the original data after a data loss event, while data recovery is the process of restoring that lost data from the backups. While Keap maintains robust internal backup systems for its platform, these are primarily for platform-level disaster recovery, not for individual user account restoration of specific, accidentally deleted data. For HR and recruiting, relying solely on Keap’s internal backups for your specific data could be risky. Implementing a third-party, specialized data backup solution for your Keap CRM (like those offered by 4Spot Consulting) provides an independent layer of protection, ensuring that even if user errors or specific Keap account issues occur, your critical candidate and employee data remains secure and recoverable.

Data Breach Notification

Data breach notification refers to the legal and ethical requirement for organizations to inform affected individuals, and often regulatory authorities, when their personal data has been compromised. In the context of Keap, if your account experiences a security incident that leads to unauthorized access or disclosure of candidate or employee data, your organization would likely be responsible for notifying those individuals. Understanding Keap’s own security protocols and having a clear internal data breach response plan is crucial for HR and recruiting teams. This plan should outline the steps to take, from identifying the breach to assessing its scope and executing timely and compliant notifications to mitigate potential harm and legal repercussions.

Data Encryption

Data encryption is the process of converting information into a code to prevent unauthorized access. When data is encrypted, it becomes unreadable to anyone who doesn’t have the decryption key. Keap employs encryption both “at rest” (when data is stored on servers) and “in transit” (when data is being sent over networks, like when you log in or submit a form). For HR and recruiting, this means that sensitive candidate applications, employee records, and communications are protected from eavesdropping and unauthorized access, even if a breach were to occur at the infrastructure level. Encryption is a fundamental component of securing personal data and maintaining its confidentiality.

Data Minimization

Data minimization is a core principle of data privacy that advocates for collecting and retaining only the personal data that is strictly necessary for the specified purpose. For HR and recruiting professionals using Keap, this means critically evaluating what information you truly need from applicants and employees. Instead of asking for every possible detail upfront, adopt a strategy that collects essential data first and then gathers more specific information as the hiring process progresses. This reduces the risk exposure associated with storing excessive amounts of sensitive data and demonstrates a commitment to privacy, making your organization more attractive to privacy-conscious candidates and ensuring compliance with regulations like GDPR.

Data Retention Policies

Data retention policies are documented guidelines that specify how long different types of data should be kept and when they should be securely disposed of. For HR and recruiting, these policies are crucial for managing candidate applications, employee records, and other sensitive information stored in Keap. Legal and compliance requirements (e.g., retaining applicant data for a certain period post-rejection) dictate minimum retention periods, but organizations must also define maximums to avoid unnecessary data storage that increases risk. Implementing these policies within Keap often involves setting up automated triggers for data archiving or deletion based on specific criteria, ensuring compliance and reducing data footprint.

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)

The GDPR is a comprehensive data protection law enacted by the European Union that imposes strict rules on how organizations collect, process, and store personal data of individuals residing in the EU. For HR and recruiting teams using Keap, if you interact with candidates or employees from the EU, GDPR compliance is non-negotiable. This includes explicit consent for data processing, providing individuals with rights over their data (e.g., right to access, right to be forgotten), and ensuring secure data transfers. Keap provides tools and features that can assist with GDPR compliance, but your organization’s internal processes and configurations are key to meeting its rigorous requirements.

Keap Automation

Keap automation refers to the use of Keap’s built-in features to create automated workflows, sequences, and campaigns that streamline business processes. While primarily known for marketing and sales, Keap automation is incredibly powerful for HR and recruiting. This could involve automatically sending follow-up emails to candidates after an interview, moving applicants through different stages of the hiring funnel based on their responses, or onboarding new hires with a series of automated tasks and information delivery. When combined with strong data security practices, Keap automation enhances efficiency, reduces manual errors, and ensures timely communication without compromising the privacy or integrity of sensitive candidate data.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is a security system that requires users to provide two or more verification factors to gain access to an account. Instead of just a password, MFA might require a password plus a code sent to a mobile phone, a biometric scan (fingerprint), or a hardware token. For HR and recruiting teams, enabling MFA on all Keap user accounts is one of the most effective and easily implementable security measures to prevent unauthorized access. Even if a password is stolen or compromised through phishing, MFA acts as a critical second line of defense, significantly reducing the risk of a data breach and protecting sensitive candidate and employee information.

Phishing/Social Engineering

Phishing and social engineering are deceptive tactics used by cybercriminals to trick individuals into revealing sensitive information (like Keap login credentials) or performing actions that compromise security. Phishing typically involves fraudulent emails or websites disguised as legitimate sources, while social engineering uses psychological manipulation. For HR and recruiting professionals, who frequently handle sensitive data and communicate externally, being vigilant against these threats is paramount. Education, strong email security protocols, and strict verification processes for any requests related to data access or system changes are essential to protect your Keap accounts and the confidential information stored within them.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is a method of restricting system access to authorized users based on their assigned roles within an organization. Rather than granting individual permissions, RBAC assigns permissions to specific roles (e.g., “Recruiter,” “HR Manager,” “Admin”), and then users are assigned to those roles. In Keap, implementing RBAC means that a “Recruiter” might only see candidate profiles relevant to their open requisitions, while an “HR Manager” might have broader access to all employee data. This granular approach ensures that employees only have access to the data necessary for their job functions, enhancing security, simplifying user management, and helping enforce data minimization principles for sensitive HR and recruiting information.

Security Audit

A security audit is a systematic evaluation of an organization’s information system’s security, measuring its compliance with a set of established criteria. For organizations using Keap, a security audit might involve reviewing user access logs, checking configurations for data encryption, assessing compliance with data retention policies, and verifying that automations handle sensitive data securely. Regularly conducting security audits (either internally or with external experts like 4Spot Consulting) helps HR and recruiting teams identify vulnerabilities, ensure that data protection measures are effectively implemented, and proactively address potential risks before they lead to a data breach. It’s a critical component of a proactive and robust data security posture.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Keap Data Protection for HR & Recruiting: Safeguarding Your Future