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Is Your Data Secure? How To Protect Your Business Information

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Is Your Data Secure? How To Protect Your Business Information

Data security loopholes create serious concerns for many business owners. Data breaches and fraud cases are big problems for businesses of all sizes. The lockdown period has seen a sharp rise in cyber-attacks on business organizations. 

To avoid costs of cybersecurity breaches, you need to be proactive to safeguard your company’s assets against cybersecurity threats. So, just how secure is your business information?

Here are some tips on how to best protect your business information against cyber-criminals.

1. Have Secure Backups

Considering that 93% of companies go bankrupt within one year after suffering a data disaster, you don’t need to be told that prioritizing backup is a smart move. There is no guarantee that your systems will run forever without any interruption. 

And with data everywhere and growing steadily, your IT environment and constantly changing pools of data all need a reliable backup plan. A wrong backup plan can give you a wrong sense of data security. But an effective multi-platform backup can secure your data against unforeseeable circumstances.

2. Update All Operating Systems and Software

Staying up-to-date with the latest cybersecurity solutions is also a good practice that can potentially save your data from being breached. There are a number of cybersecurity software that are designed to protect businesses from malware and other dangers. 

Sign up for a paid security software that provides full security to your network and connected devices. Investing in data security is worth it as one data breach incident can cost you the whole business.

Once you enroll in a cybersecurity program, ensure that all your operating systems are routinely updated. Install updates immediately when they become available because you can’t tell when the unexpected will happen. For example, according to Bloomberg, the Equifax breach incident that affected more than 143 million people happened because the company did not update their Apache Struts.

3. Limit Employee Access to Only Needed Data

Not all employees at the company need access to all of the business information. Many may make honest mistakes in opening an email or clicking on a link that gives the sender access to the employee’s network. That means that the more data every employee has access to, the more people hackers have the ability to try to manipulate to give out the right information.

Some disgruntled employees may take revenge on their organizations. From a security point of view, role-based access control is a tool that restricts system access to authorized users. 

4. Hire a Professional MSP

Many businesses are now using managed service providers (MSPs) for IT. They can help with IT infrastructure, revamp cybersecurity strategies, and improve other business functions.

Professional MSPs adopt cutting-edge technologies to offer IT cybersecurity services. To reduce your risks of data loss, try to partner with reputable managed service providers, as they have advanced tools to conduct and maintain backup files to minimize threats to your data.

5. Keep Data Organized

If you intend to work with a data management software, you need to draw a data management plan. This will help you maintain well-organized data throughout the data lifecycle. Your data management plan may capture information on how you will name your files, backup your data, and how to hide your sensitive information.

Classifying your data is a big part of organizing it. So put your data into categories to allow for easy access and retrieval. Have established procedures for classified data and select a few trusted individuals to be in charge of it.

6. Have a Business Contingency Plan

Today, entrepreneurs live in a data-driven world, and the need to store large quantities of data is a normal thing for many organizations. However, big data can burden businesses with data security problems. That said, no matter how you secure your data, there is some risk of incident.

Unfortunately, over one in five companies report not having a contingency plan in place against data loss. Every business that stores data needs to have a disaster plan in place for such occurrences. Identify the risks and build an effective plan against data disasters.