No matter what kind of company you run, keeping your business data safe and secure is absolutely vital. From your marketing materials and financial records to sensitive customer data, protecting anything and everything that you store that’s related to your company is crucial for success and upholding a good reputation. A data breach can not only put your company at a very high level of risk, but can dramatically affect your customers, too – customer names, addresses, and financial information especially should always be kept secure and out of the wrong hands. Here are some important strategies to take when it comes to keeping your business data safe.
#1. Understand Which Data to Prioritize:
The first step is to take a look at all the data that you hold, whether it’s financial records, your customer information, or important supplier data. Go through each data set in order to prioritize them in terms of sensitivity. As a general rule, any personal data such as customer and employee information should be top priority, followed closely by any financial information and records for your company. Record where it is stored and ensure that you have back-ups that are regularly updated. The cloud can be the best way to store and back-up any sensitive information, since it can be strongly password protected and harder for cyber-criminals to get into when you use a good firewall program and virtual private network (VPN).
#2. Keep Your Network Safe:
Keeping your business network safe is imperative to avoid getting hacked and suffering a data breach. In addition to maintaining a regularly updated anti-virus program on all work devices, it’s also vital to train your employees on the importance of online and data security. This could include never sharing passwords with others and using a password manager tool to generate strong login credentials and eliminate the need to write any important information down on post-it notes. If your employees bring their own devices to work, ensure that they are aware of the security risks and that each device is compliant with network security requirements.
#3. Protect Physically Stored Data:
Any data that is stored physically, such as on a hard drive or pen drive, should always be treated as higher risk than that which is stored online. This is because it’s simply easier for you to use – pen drives can go missing whilst traveling, or information stored on a computer’s hard drive can be stolen or damaged by natural disasters or vandalism. In addition to upping security around any sensitive information stored physically, it’s also important to have back-ups for everything. A cloud back-up will make everything easier in the event of losing or damaging a device on which important files are stored. It’s also a good idea to password protect all your devices; you can add a strong password to a pen drive or other portable storage system to make it harder for the information stored within to get into the wrong hands.
Keeping your business data safe is crucial to your success!
