10 Tips for Keeping Your Business’ Data Secure

Data is an invaluable modern business asset that can help you make better and more informed decisions. Using raw data, your company can assess the impact of its efforts on customer satisfaction to determine where to improve. Business leaders can use data to spot and address primary concerns and monitor the effect of recommended solutions. Using data, your business can see how expensive or efficient specific processes are and find ways to streamline them.

Before delving into data security, it’s crucial to mention the importance of data cleansing. Data cleansing can be an essential part to ensure your data is accurate, consistent, and usable, which, in turn, enhances the validity of your business decisions and regulatory compliance efforts. A data cleansing guide will help you rectify any inaccuracies in your data, remove duplicates, and fill in missing information, making the data more reliable and the protection process more effective.

Protecting your business’ data safeguards valuable information, keeps you ahead of the competition, minimizes development costs, ensures site security, and protects against hackers. Data protection enables you to comply with regulations like HIPAA and PCI DSS. It also provides better business management and reduces the risk of experiencing downtime. However, neglecting data security may result in data loss, causing prolonged downtime and hindering core operations. This article discusses nine tips for keeping your business’ data secure.

Leverage a Secure Web Gateway

A secure web gateway safeguards your business against online security infections and threats by implementing company strategies and sifting internet-bound traffic. It sits between the internet and users to ensure advanced network security by assessing web requests alongside company policies to ascertain that malicious websites and apps are inaccessible and blocked.

Secure web gateways include vital security technologies, like application control, URL filtering, antivirus, HTTPS inspection, and data loss prevention, to give your business robust web security. Implementing a secure gateway enforces compliance regulations and policies, imposes business security policies to protect remote workers, and prevents malware infections.

Take Advantage of Using Proxy Servers

Residential proxies are IP addresses assigned to real residential devices, such as home computers, smartphones, and routers. These proxies are used to access the internet, and when used correctly, they can help keep your business data secure.

One of the primary benefits of using residential proxies is that they can help hide your business’s real IP address. This can be particularly useful when conducting sensitive business operations, such as web scraping, market research, or competitor analysis. By using residential proxies, your business can avoid detection and avoid the risk of being blocked or banned from a website.

Another advantage of residential proxies is that they can help protect your business from cyberattacks. With the increased use of automation tools, cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated in their attempts to steal business data. Using residential proxies, your business can help hide its online activity and avoid being targeted by hackers.

Institute Regular Cybersecurity Audits

A cybersecurity audit examines your business’s ability to safeguard its systems and data from cyberattacks. It includes a review of a company’s procedures, technical controls, and policies, which an external auditor does. A cybersecurity audit aims to identify your organization’s defense weak points and suggest enhancements that can help safeguard against future attacks.

Penetration tests and vulnerability, security, risk, and compliance assessments are some cybersecurity audits you can conduct to make your business more secure. While regular cybersecurity audits can help enhance data security, increase customer confidence, give you peace of mind, and improve insurance coverage, their frequency differs based on your company’s size, risk profile, and industry.

Use Passwords

Your company computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets contain valuable data. The data must be only available to you and other authorized users. When used correctly, passwords are an easy, effective, and free way to prevent unauthorized device access. Once you set strong passwords for your accounts and devices, turn on encryption and configure them.

Consider implementing multi-layer authentication to add a security layer, increase data safety, and secure your site from hackers. While passwords should be easy to recall, they should be difficult for others to guess. Ensure all default passwords are changed before your staff is issued new devices. Additionally, check your software and devices regularly to find unchanged default passwords.

Encrypt Everything

Cybercriminals can breach your defenses. They can trick employees into clicking phishing email links or slip past a firewall. However, they should be able to read your information to misuse or sell it. Encryption is an excellent defense mechanism against security breaches because even after hackers access, copy, and steal your business data, it’ll be useless to them. Without the encryption key, they cannot read your data. Consider encrypting everything, including data storage and documents.

Ensure Regular Data Backup

Data backup is an archive or copy of the essential information kept on your devices, including phones, computers, or tablets, and is used to retrieve the original data in case of data loss. Data losses may occur, including hard drive failures, human error, ransomware attacks, or physical theft. Regardless of the misfortune, data backup might be the break you need to restore data in your devices. Consider transferring your backups to a virtual data room to enhance your data protection further. Services like Clinked offer high levels of security to ensure your data is kept safe and accessible only to those with the proper authorization.

Backups are usually stored in a safe, separate place from the original device, like the cloud. When protecting your business’ data, you can choose between full, differential, or incremental backups depending on the information size you’re protecting and the frequency you wish to back it up with.

Invest in Cybersecurity Training for Your Employees

Your employees are your business data’s first line of defense. Investing in cybersecurity training for them is worth it. Data exposure and most breaches result from human error and, at times, intentional conduct. Through cyber literacy, you can create awareness and offer a deeper understanding of cybersecurity best practices, enhancing data security and reducing human error.

Implementing a regular cybersecurity awareness training program and cyber security certifications can help ensure your staff comprehends how to utilize technology appropriately. The training can also teach your team about installing the best malware detection software and firewalls. Data breaches can be costly. Investing in cybersecurity education for your workers can help save money while complying with data security standards and regulations.

Consider Vulnerability Scanning

Vulnerability scans detect and group possible security exploitation areas in apps, network devices, data stores, and computer systems. They inspect your computer network’s attack surfaces that external or internal attackers can use to get unauthorized access, like firewalls, services, applications, and more. Vulnerability scanning ensures all your network entry points are safeguarded by ascertaining that they’re updated, regularly monitored, and closed off to ensure hackers don’t get them.

Vulnerability scans help identify risks before hackers can, optimize the required fixes, examine your business’ data security level, and manage resources effectively. They also safeguard your business assets’ integrity, increase operational efficiencies, save money from data breaches, achieve data protection requirements, and boost business credibility. Scans are analyzed alongside a known vulnerability database to spot your system’s security gaps and let you fix them before escalating.

Learn What to Do After a Data Breach

Knowing what to do after your data is stolen comes in handy. If valuable business information is exposed in a data breach, quickly secure your credit card and bank accounts and take extra precautions to alleviate credit fraud. Once you receive the breach notification, begin with the affected accounts by updating the PINs and passwords for logging into them. While the directly affected accounts are at greater risk, access to personal data increases the risk of the rest of the accounts getting compromised.

Consider initiating a fraud alert notifying any lenders processing credit card applications in your name that you could be a fraud or identity theft victim and requesting that they verify that you’re the applicant before proceeding. Monitor your credit reports and financial accounts to detect any unexpected or unusual activities on your accounts. You can lock or freeze your credit file to limit access.

Build a Security Culture

Any data security efforts you make can only be successful if there’s a shift in the company culture. Building a strong security culture increases the possibility of your staff getting engaged with and taking responsibility for security concerns that might arise. It also improves compliance with data security measures, reduces insider risk threats, and increases awareness of relevant security risks in your company.

With a proactive security culture, your staff will likely reason and behave security-consciously. To build and nurture a solid security culture, consider attitudes, cognition, behaviors, communication, norms, compliance, and responsibilities.

Endnote

Data protection is essential to ensure that your company information isn’t used for fraudulent activities, such as phishing, hacking, and identity theft. Use these tips to secure your business data and conduct online business safely.