Data security should be a top priority for every business, especially those that are data-driven. Ensure the security of your data by enforcing certain standards and practices within your company. These standards may include:
1. Regulatory Compliance
Data security regulations & compliance should be your starting point, not the ultimate goal for your business. Being compliant with security regulations such as GDPR will help protect your data, but it does not mean you can’t be breached. As the regulation states, “companies must provide a “reasonable” level of protection for personal data”, it does not define what constitutes as “reasonable”. Companies must always be on their toes, as cyberattacks become more advanced and sophisticated.
2. Patching Vulnerabilities
Data loss and other data security threats are often the result of system vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is crucial that you fix these vulnerabilities as soon as you can to reduce the threats to your business’ data and infrastructure. As simple meeting with a Security Specialist will allow him to analyze your infrastructure and provide you with a report on where your blind spots and weaknesses are.
3. Centralized Data Security Management
Data security is something that everyone in the organization should be responsible for. With that being said, someone should be overseeing that data is distributed in a secure manner. This person should also be responsible for implementing access controls in order to ensure that the data is only accessible to the people who are meant to receive it and no one else. Another option, could be hiring an MSP to continuously monitor your network.
The Role of Employees in Data Security
Whether you like it or not, your employees are the weakest links when it comes to data security. While there are employees following best practices ensuring data security, there are many that are negligent. The main reason for that, is that they haven’t been trained on the subject. Therefore, training your employees is essential to keeping your data secure. Here some other ways you can help them out:
1. Password Management System
Passwords play a huge role in our daily lives. Think about how many platforms or apps require a password for you to login; now if you have the same password for all these different accounts, we have a problem. The same can be said for your employees. If a hacker gains access to one account, he will ultimately have access to all the other ones.
A solution to this is to employ a password management system. Remembering different passwords to 40 different accounts is hard. But with a password management system, it does the remembering for you, and even reminds you to change your password every month.
2. Appropriate Information Sharing
It is alarming to know that a cybercriminal can easily go through an employee’s social media, gather information on that employee, and guess their password correctly. To avoid this from happening, you should encourage your employees from posting personal information without reviewing who can see them first. They should set their social media pages private where only an approved list of friends can view their content. Moreover, you should try your best to not ever share content that relates to the office. For example, you may accidentally post a picture of your employees standing in front of a projector screen that displays sensitive company information.
3. Consider Public Wi-Fi Risks
Public Wi-Fi connections can be the perfect gateway to your data. This is why you should tell your employees to be careful when connecting to public Wi-Fi. In fact, your employees should not engage in important tasks that can lead to your company data, such as checking their email, while connected to Public Wi-Fi. The reason being, is that it is not secure, so hackers can easily access to your data when connected, if you are not careful.
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