explore how HubSpot's data encryption capabilities provide peace of mind by safeguarding customer and enterprise data, ensuring compliance with global regulations, and enabling businesses to handle sensitive information securely.
These days, businesses increasingly handle large volumes of information. Every piece of data is a potential vulnerability—especially when it’s sensitive, personal, or proprietary.
A recent report indicates that 68% of U.S. companies experienced a ransomware attack in 2023. The need for strong data protection is even more pressing when that information is accessed by teams across multiple locations and devices.
For enterprises managing sensitive data, the challenge is not just meeting compliance requirements but also ensuring that operations remain secure and customer trust is preserved. With the growing complexity of data security, encryption has become a non-negotiable measure. HubSpot's robust data encryption features offer a reliable solution for businesses looking to secure their data and meet industry compliance standards.
In this article, we'll explore how HubSpot's data encryption capabilities provide peace of mind by safeguarding customer and enterprise data, ensuring compliance with global regulations, and enabling businesses to handle sensitive information securely.
HubSpot’s approach to data encryption
Data encryption transforms readable information into a secure code that only authorized parties can decipher. This is essential for protecting sensitive data from unauthorized access, which can lead to financial and reputational damage.
For organizations handling large volumes of customer data, whether personal, financial, or proprietary, encryption ensures that even if data is breached, it remains unreadable without the proper key.
Encryption is also critical for compliance with regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA. These laws require sensitive data to be encrypted both in storage and during transfer. Non-compliance can result in hefty fines and a loss of customer trust, making encryption a non-negotiable part of modern business operations.
How does HubSpot’s data encryption work?
HubSpot employs encryption protocols both when data is stored (at rest) and when it’s transferred between systems (in transit). This two-layer approach guarantees that data remains secure regardless of where it resides or how it moves.
For data at rest, HubSpot encrypts all customer data stored in its databases and backup systems, ensuring that even in the event of physical access to servers, the data stays protected. This level of security is especially vital for businesses handling vast amounts of sensitive information, such as personal details and financial transactions. With HubSpot's encryption, that data remains unreadable without the appropriate decryption keys.
In addition, HubSpot secures data in transit using SSL/TLS encryption protocols. This protection is particularly valuable for businesses with teams accessing the system from multiple locations. By encrypting data during transmission, HubSpot ensures that even if data is intercepted while moving across networks, it remains inaccessible to unauthorized parties. This is particularly critical when sensitive information, such as payment details or personal data, is shared or processed.
This comprehensive HubSpot data encryption framework offers businesses the assurance that their sensitive data is consistently protected, from the moment it enters HubSpot to its storage or transfer across systems.
Video source: HubSpot
How HubSpot’s data encryption ensures compliance with industry standards
Meeting compliance regulations while managing large datasets can be complex, especially for organizations in industries like healthcare, finance, and e-commerce. Without the right infrastructure, businesses risk data breaches or failing to meet strict regulatory requirements.
HubSpot offers a comprehensive suite of encryption and security features designed to help businesses stay compliant with regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA.
Key HubSpot features for compliance:
- SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3Compliance: HubSpot adheres to SOC 2 Type II, confirming its security practices meet industry standards for protecting data. Additionally, HubSpot has a SOC 3 report, which provides a public-facing summary of its SOC 2 audit, offering transparency into its security controls. This gives organizations confidence that HubSpot’s platform is secure and that its encryption protocols meet necessary compliance standards.
- Data Encryption (At Rest and In Transit): HubSpot’s encryption features ensure sensitive data is secure both when stored and when in transit. Whether dealing with customer details or financial transactions, HubSpot helps businesses keep data safe from unauthorized access, a key requirement for compliance with GDPR and other regulations.
- ISO/IEC 27001 Certification: HubSpot itself is not ISO/IEC 27001 certified. However, its products are hosted with cloud infrastructure providers that hold certifications such as SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001. This means that while HubSpot leverages infrastructure with internationally recognized security standards, the certification applies to the hosting providers, not HubSpot directly.
To further strengthen your HubSpot data protection strategy, we recommend partnering with a HubSpot Solutions Provider that is also certified in security and quality standards, like Huble. Huble is ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified, safeguarding data security and compliance across all operations, and ISO 9001:2015 certified, ensuring consistent, high-quality consulting experiences worldwide.
How HubSpot helps with industry-specific compliance
- GDPR Compliance: HubSpot’s encryption capabilities support GDPR’s requirements for encrypting personal data during storage and transfer. By using HubSpot’s encryption tools, businesses ensure that personal data is safeguarded, reducing the risk of non-compliance and hefty fines.
- HIPAA Compliance: For healthcare organizations, HubSpot helps maintain compliance with HIPAA regulations by encrypting sensitive data like patient records. This ensures that health data remains protected and confidential, supporting businesses in meeting their legal obligations.
- CCPA Compliance: HubSpot supports compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) by helping businesses manage and protect personal data. The platform’s encryption ensures that customer data is secure during transactions and storage, crucial for meeting CCPA requirements.
By leveraging these encryption and security features, HubSpot empowers businesses to meet the complex data protection and privacy requirements of their industry.
Managing sensitive data across teams with HubSpot’s data encryption
In organizations where multiple teams need access to customer data, ensuring secure, compliant handling of sensitive information is a constant challenge. As teams collaborate, the risk of internal data misuse or unauthorized access increases, especially when dealing with personal, financial, or medical data.
Challenge 1: Different data needs across teams
Marketing, sales, and customer service teams each require access to different sets of data to do their jobs effectively. However, this can create friction when sensitive data, such as financial records or personal health information, is involved.
For instance:
- Marketing needs access to customer profiles for targeted campaigns but should never be exposed to sensitive financial or health data.
- Sales teams might need to access customer information such as contact details and product history, but shouldn't be able to view confidential billing information or service-level agreements.
- Customer service teams require information on ongoing support tickets but shouldn't have access to a customer’s credit card data or transaction history.
Solution: Role-based access control (RBAC) with HubSpot
HubSpot’s role-based access control (RBAC) allows organizations to assign data access permissions to users based on their roles, ensuring that each team only has access to the information they need.
Image source: HubSpot
For example:
- A marketing team member can have access to customer contact details and campaign analytics but won’t have permissions to view sensitive financial or health data.
- Sales reps can see customer profiles and sales data but are restricted from viewing payment details or internal service notes.
- A customer service agent can access support-related data without being able to view personal or transaction-specific information.
This tailored approach ensures that sensitive data remains protected while giving teams the access they need to do their jobs.
Challenge 2: Data protection across multiple locations
Organizations often have teams working in different locations, whether across multiple offices or remotely. This can complicate data security, as teams may need access to sensitive data from various locations or devices, increasing the risk of data interception or unauthorized access during transmission.
For instance:
- A sales representative working remotely may need to access a customer’s billing information during a video call, but the connection might be unsecured, potentially exposing sensitive data.
- A customer service team member in another office might need to pull up sensitive support tickets or personal data on their mobile device, which could be vulnerable to breaches if not encrypted.
Solution: HubSpot’s Encryption in transit
HubSpot uses SSL/TLS encryption to secure data during transmission. This ensures that all sensitive information, whether customer contact details, payment information, or support tickets, is encrypted when transmitted between systems, safeguarding it from unauthorized access, even if it’s intercepted.
For example:
- A sales rep accessing a customer’s account details over a remote connection will ensure that their interaction is encrypted, preventing potential eavesdropping or interception.
- A customer service agent accessing customer support data from a mobile device or remote location will have the reassurance that the data is encrypted in transit, securing it from unauthorized access.
This level of encryption ensures data security and peace of mind, regardless of where or how the data is accessed.
Challenge 3: Ensuring compliance with industry regulations
For businesses in regulated industries like healthcare or finance, compliance with data protection laws is not just necessary for operational security but also for avoiding heavy fines and reputational damage. Managing encryption and data access control manually can be complex and error-prone.
For instance:
- A healthcare provider using HubSpot needs to ensure that patient data is encrypted in both storage and transit to comply with HIPAA.
- A financial institution must keep client transaction data encrypted while ensuring that only authorized staff can access it to meet GDPR and CCPA requirements.
Solution: HubSpot’s encryption and compliance certifications
HubSpot’s platform comes with built-in encryption both for data at rest and in transit, helping businesses comply with stringent regulations like HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, and PCI DSS. These encryption measures ensure that sensitive data is properly protected from the moment it’s entered into HubSpot, throughout storage, and during transmission.
For example:
- A healthcare organization storing patient records in HubSpot benefits from encryption at rest, ensuring that even if someone gains physical access to the servers, the data remains unreadable without the proper decryption keys.
- A financial services company can leverage HubSpot’s SSL/TLS encryption to ensure secure data transfer of transaction details, keeping client data safe and helping the organization stay compliant with regulatory requirements.
Challenge 4: Securely managing data retention and deletion
Organizations must not only ensure that data is securely encrypted, but they also need a robust strategy for data retention and secure deletion. Many businesses face challenges when it comes to properly managing and deleting data to comply with legal requirements, especially as data grows and accumulates over time.
For instance:
- A marketing team may need to retain customer data for a specific period for campaign reporting but must delete it securely when it’s no longer required.
- A financial services company needs to ensure that all financial records are securely deleted after a certain retention period to comply with data privacy regulations.
Solution 4: HubSpot’s data retention and deletion protocols
HubSpot allows businesses to manage encrypted data retention and deletion securely. Once data is no longer needed, HubSpot ensures it’s properly deleted, meeting compliance requirements for secure data disposal and minimizing the risk of residual data being exposed.
For example:
- A marketing team can set automated data deletion rules for customer information that’s no longer relevant, ensuring data is purged securely and in compliance with data protection laws.
- A financial institution can schedule secure deletion of outdated transaction records, ensuring that sensitive financial data is securely removed when it’s no longer needed.
HubSpot’s secure data retention and deletion protocols streamline compliance and operational efficiency, reducing the risk of non-compliance with industry regulations.
Best practices for securing your HubSpot data beyond encryption
For large organizations managing extensive customer data, securing sensitive information requires more than just relying on out-of-the-box encryption. It's about actively optimizing and scaling your security practices to ensure robust protection and compliance across all departments, locations, and devices.
Here are advanced, actionable strategies to strengthen your organization’s data security by enhancing and complementing HubSpot’s existing encryption.
1. Granular encryption control for high-priority data
At the enterprise level, data security requires fine-tuning. While HubSpot provides strong encryption by default, customizing it to align with your organization’s specific security needs is critical. Sensitive data, such as financial information, medical records, or PII, may need stronger encryption protocols to meet compliance standards like HIPAA or GDPR.
Our tip: Create custom data properties in HubSpot for particularly sensitive information and apply full encryption only to those fields. This ensures that high-risk data like payment info or confidential client details are protected while reducing encryption overhead on less sensitive data.
2. Scale two-factor authentication (2FA) across teams
While two-factor authentication (2FA) is widely understood, scaling it effectively across large teams can be a challenge. Implementing 2FA across a distributed workforce, often with varied access points, adds an extra layer of protection to your encrypted data, especially when teams access systems from remote locations.
Our tip: Use HubSpot’s bulk user management features to quickly enable 2FA across your entire user base. Ensure employees access HubSpot through trusted methods like mobile authenticator apps or email-based authentication to reduce risks associated with password vulnerabilities.
3. IP whitelisting for secure access across global teams
For organizations with teams working across multiple locations or time zones, enforcing access restrictions based on IP addresses can significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access. IP whitelisting limits which devices and networks can access HubSpot, ensuring that sensitive encrypted data is protected from unauthorized sources.
Our tip: While HubSpot doesn’t currently support role-specific IP restrictions, you can enhance security by limiting portal access to trusted IP addresses only. Ensure that employees handling sensitive data, such as customer financial information, connect through secure networks or VPNs. This reduces the risk of unauthorized access, especially for remote or globally distributed teams.
4. Audit trails and real-time monitoring for proactive security
At an enterprise scale, manual monitoring is often impractical. Instead, automated monitoring of access logs and real-time auditing becomes essential. HubSpot offers comprehensive audit trails that enable you to track who’s accessing your encrypted data and when.
Our tip: Leverage HubSpot’s API and reporting features to integrate data and events into your internal monitoring systems. This allows you to flag suspicious access patterns and send automated alerts for rapid response.
5. Secure third-party integrations and data flows
For large organizations, third-party integrations are a common vector for security risks. Whether integrating HubSpot with a marketing automation tool, a payment gateway, or a customer support platform, ensuring these external systems also adhere to best security practices is critical.
Our tip: Before integrating third-party apps with HubSpot, conduct security assessments to ensure these tools meet encryption standards and are GDPR-compliant.
By embedding these practices within your enterprise’s security strategy, you can ensure that sensitive data remains protected across all touchpoints, locations, and workflows, reducing the risk of breaches and maintaining compliance with global regulations.
Use case example: securing confidential data with HubSpot data encryption
Let’s explore how HubSpot’s data encryption capabilities can protect sensitive data in a real-world scenario.
Consider a multinational healthcare organization managing vast volumes of patient data across multiple locations. With thousands of employees accessing and updating records daily, from hospital administrators to remote healthcare professionals, maintaining both security and compliance is a constant challenge.
To meet HIPAA requirements and safeguard patient privacy, the organization uses HubSpot’s encryption features to protect sensitive information, such as medical histories, lab results, and insurance details. Data is automatically encrypted both at rest (when stored in HubSpot’s database) and in transit (as it moves between systems), ensuring that even if intercepted or accessed without authorization, the information remains unreadable.
For instance, when a physician remotely accesses a patient’s records via HubSpot, SSL/TLS encryption ensures the data is securely transmitted over the network. Simultaneously, role-based access control (RBAC) ensures that only authorized medical staff can view or modify sensitive information, reducing the risk of internal exposure.
Additionally, the organization leverages HubSpot’s audit trails and access logs to monitor data interactions. This enables security teams to track who accessed specific records, when, and from which location—helping them quickly identify suspicious activity and maintain compliance with healthcare regulations.
This scenario demonstrates how HubSpot’s robust encryption framework, combined with access controls and monitoring tools, can help organizations in highly regulated industries protect sensitive data, reduce exposure risks, and meet strict compliance standards.
Strengthen Your Data Security with HubSpot Data Encryption
HubSpot’s data encryption provides a strong framework for protecting data at every stage, whether it’s at rest or in transit. By ensuring that customer and business data is consistently encrypted, HubSpot helps organizations reduce the risk of breaches, prevent unauthorized access, and stay compliant with regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA.
Beyond encryption, HubSpot data protection features, including role-based access control, real-time monitoring, and secure data retention, empower businesses to manage sensitive information effectively without sacrificing productivity. With the right security measures in place, teams can confidently collaborate and scale, knowing that their data is protected by industry-leading encryption standards.
If you’re looking to enhance HubSpot data encryption practices or need guidance on securing sensitive data within your HubSpot environment, we’re here to help. As a HubSpot Solutions Provider, we specialize in helping organizations implement tailored security strategies that align with their business needs.
Get in touch today to schedule a call with our team and discover how to strengthen your HubSpot data protection.
