Whether you are a startup or a big corporation, data theft and web threats can cause significant interruptions to your business operations. Without adequate security and established procedures, your business is open to the results of such attacks, which can be annoying and irreversible. Here are four tips to secure your business data.
- Create a Security Strategy
Instead of having an ambiguous idea about procedures and policies, your business needs to have an official IT security plan that is exhaustive and detailed. This strategy should outline how to protect your resources and data and also inform you what you should do in case things go wrong. A clear response system will help you stay a step ahead of any incidences rather than taking rash actions that may aggravate the situation.
- Encrypt Everything
Crackers may breach your security, bypass your firewall, or trick your staff into clicking on phishing links. However, they must be able to read your data to use it or sell it.
Data encryption is your best protection against security breaches because even if the attackers steal or expose your customer information, if your database is encrypted, it means they have nothing. Without the encryption key, even the best hacker will discover that they have an unreadable bunch of chatter. So your best bet is to encrypt everything always.
- Always Back Up
Back up your business information daily in the cloud and on an external hard drive. This will enable you to recover the data in the event of a disaster or in case a malicious intruder deletes it.
- Use Stronger Passwords
Use strong passwords and change them regularly to make it difficult for hackers to access your information. Use passwords that someone cannot guess and words that cannot be found in a dictionary. Your passwords should also be meaningful, so you don’t need to write them down. But if you need to write them down, keep them in a locked place.
The password should have a length of at least eight characters and incorporate upper and lowercase letters and special symbols such as #, $, &, %, etc.
Use and share these guidelines with the members of your organization to help keep your business data secure.
