How to protect your business's precious data

Many things can put your business’s data at risk, and if you’re not taking steps to secure your data, you risk losing clients and being fined.

So don’t delay. Start to implement these data security procedures today.

How To Protect your Business’s Precious Data

Backup Your Data in the Cloud

Cloud backup lets your organization send a copy of your data to another location so that in the event your data is compromised, and you can restore it. This will enable you to ensure business continuity and safeguard you against experiencing an IT crisis.

Cloud backup is recommended over on-site backup for reasons of accessibility. When you use a cloud backup system, you can access your data anytime, anywhere, and don’t have to worry that your backup hardware may have been compromised.

The best cloud backup tools will have unlimited storage and intrusion prevention, including 256-bit encryption for storage and data transfer, SSL or TLS, and use multilocation data storage.

Secure Your Data Against Malware

Malware is invasive software that is built with the sole purpose of damaging and destroying computers and computer systems.

Malware includes viruses, spyware, adware, worms, and ransomware. Anytime malicious software gets into your computer system, it can result in vast amounts of data damage.

Therefore you need to take the appropriate steps to secure your data against malware. This means applying a firewall to your router, installing PC protection software, and using anti-spam software to protect against unwanted emails.

Guard your Wireless Network

Hackers love an unprotected wireless network. While most wireless networks come with an encryption key, this isn’t enough to protect against hackers. Instead, it would be best if you strengthened your router by using the most robust encryption setting available.

You should also turn off the broadcasting function on your router to make your network invisible. Hackers can’t break into a hidden network because hackers can’t hack what they can’t see. 

Protect Your Passwords

Passwords are a crucial line of defence for your data. It might be not very pleasant to have to remember a different, complex password for all of your accounts, but it’s worth it when you consider how precious your data is.

Therefore you need to make your passwords as complex as possible. This means making your password at least eight characters long.

Furthermore, your password should include non-standard characters and numbers. It would help if you also changed your passwords frequently.

Devise a Plan for Employee Personal Devices

As a business, you need to be aware of the risks of employees bringing their devices into your offices and using them.

It would help if you created a plan to protect you against mobile system costs and legal repercussions.

With a comprehensive policy covering location tracking, pertinent data deletion, and internet monitoring issues, you can ensure that your company’s data is secured.

Furthermore, you should make sure you have the proper provisions for employees who work remotely or use their own devices in their jobs. If not properly managed, these practices can introduce security concerns.

Enable Automatic Software Updates

Hackers are keen to exploit vulnerabilities in outdated software. Therefore, it’s essential to regularly update your operating systems, software programs, and service security settings.

The easiest way to do this is by setting up an automatic system and software updates. As a result, you won’t risk becoming vulnerable if you forget to do an update. 

Get Rid of Data Properly

If you have the proper measures to get rid of the data you no longer use, you will reduce the risk of a security breach.

This means ensuring that retired devices and storage media have their contents appropriately removed. In this way, you will be guaranteeing that confidential company data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. 

It’s also important to remember that reinstalling your operating system, deleting specific files and folders, and formatting your hard drive is not a guarantee that your data is gone.

In fact, in most cases, you can recover your data with freely-available tools. Therefore you must ensure that your IT disposal partner uses a device that overwrites your data multiple times, thereby ensuring others can’t recover your data.

Summary

Securing your company’s data is no small matter. If you don’t protect your business’s data correctly, you risk losing customers and money. This means you can’t take any shortcuts when it comes to data security. 

In this article, we’ve covered seven ways of securing your data. These methods are:

  • Backing up your data in the cloud
  • Protecting your computer and computer systems against malware
  • Securing your wireless network
  • Creating complex, hard to hack passwords
  • Having a plan to keep employee’s devices from being a security issue
  • Enabling automatic software updates
  • Properly disposing of your data.

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