How Can You Protect Your Business From Data Breaches

How Can You Protect Your Business From Data Breaches?

Data breaches are more common today, with approximately 1,862 cases in 2021 alone.  It is now a threat to both big and small businesses, making it extremely risky to run yours without adequate data security. The risks of data breaches can be devastating for your profits and reputation, so it will be helpful to implement preventative measures to protect your business. Below are some robust security measures you can put in place. 

1. Employee training

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Careless or uneducated staff behaviors are one of the leading causes of data breaches. And cybercriminals are always on the lookout to exploit this. Moreover, studies suggest many businesses continue to experience security breaches due to human error. Therefore, it is essential to employ measures to improve your employees' knowledge and expertise on data breaches. Just a click on a virus-infected email is enough to compromise your entire network. However, when your employees are properly trained, they can recognize “phishing emails” and those with attachments from unsuspecting individuals. Training can also cover safe mobile device and internet usage and strong password creation.  

2. Data backup and recovery 

Data backup is a must to protect your business against data loss. This ensures that when there is a human error, power outage, natural disaster, or cyber-attack, you will still be able to access your information. You can ensure data continuity by replicating and hosting your data on multiple backup servers. This may also include planning and testing several kinds of failure, setting up a backup schedule, monitoring the data environment, and troubleshooting backup challenges. 

3. Separate business and personal accounts 

It is best to maintain separate email accounts for your business, personal, and financials to protect your business. This way, anybody with access to your personal emails and website cannot access your business and any resources related to it. Likewise, keep an eye on anything you upload or attach to your systems and, if possible, encrypt your data. Data encryption is critical for any business, large or small because it can keep hackers out of your data and business information and prevent your employees from taking sensitive data that needs to be left at the workplace. 

4. Implement access control systems

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According to a global cybersecurity organization, cybercriminals view employees as the most vulnerable way to gain entry into an organization. For this reason, it is best to ensure that only authorized personnel have access to some company data. It is also crucial to have sufficient information and network security to minimize your risk. While the information on health, financial records, and customer data is usually kept on company-owned servers, a good access control system can grant and restrict access to IT rooms to keep them safe. Control systems can also ensure that only authorized people access networks and individual computers. 

Implementing the right security measure isn't always easy for small businesses with limited resources. Yet, it is essential to secure against data breaches and limit risks of expensive business disruption.