Are your documents safe when you submit them online or email them for a quote? What happens to your information afterwards? These are valid concerns, especially when dealing with sensitive information. Reputable language service providers should be constantly addressing and mitigating any risks to your data security and privacy. Here’s how you can look out for them.
Word-of-mouth
A good reputation implies trust. When people have a bad experience, they tend to talk about it. It’s always worth doing a bit of background research into the company first to find out what people (especially ones who have worked with or for them) are saying about them.
Website
When you need a quick quote, uploading your documents onto a website is a convenient option. But before you fire off your private information, think first: do you trust this website?
One indicator of security is whether or not the site supports HTTPS (the secure version of HTTP). You can sometimes see HTTPS in a site’s URL, but it can also be hidden. You can check via the security status symbol to the left of the web address. If you notice a warning triangle there, be cautious. It means the site is not secure and may be dangerous.
Have a look at the site’s outward appearance as well. Regularly updated websites are probably more likely to follow security protocols, and outdated websites are more likely to get hacked (based on the assumption that they aren’t up-to-date with their security).
Automated content
The use of AI can pose some security risks. Much of this depends on the model used, and whether it is kept regularly updated. Your language service partner should be able to respond to your queries about automated content transparently, being able to tell you what measures they have in place to mitigate security threats.
For machine translation, remember that if you upload documents to a free machine translation platform you could be granting them a licence to use and/or publicly display your content in exchange for their service. Security is one of the many benefits of using a paid machine translation service.
Online TMS systems
One of the reasons language service providers use online translation management systems is because they are secure. Most also provide the option of restricting downloads, so your data never leaves the TMS if you don’t want it to.
Supplier vetting and agreements
It goes without saying that a good language service provider will always carefully vet the people they work with, and all of their suppliers must have signed an NDA and agreement before being sent any of your information or documents. You can always ask to see these documents before proceeding.
Accreditation
The ISO 27001 is an international standard for managing information security. To meet the standard, organisations must be able to establish, implement, maintain, and continually improve an information security management system (ISMS). In short, being ISO 27001 accredited is a good indication that an organisation is implementing sufficient risk management processes and developing appropriate mitigation strategies to identify potential threats and protect your data.
Wider security measures
Always check through the provider’s policies first so you know your rights and understand what they intend to do with your data and what security measures they have in place to protect it. These can include storing information on secure servers and utilising user names, passwords, encryptions, and anonymisation where appropriate.
(Here are the links to our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy)
It’s right to be concerned about security and privacy in the translation industry, and a reputable language service provider should have outlined, carefully-considered measures in place to protect your data. Before handing anything over, we recommend you do your own checks first, and always ask their data protection lead for more information if you have any doubts.