Data theft and web threat can cause significant disruptions to the day-to-day operations of your business. These threats can be extremely damaging to your business. However, they are merely avoidable, especially when you have the right safety measures in place. Investing in the appropriate method is vital if you want to ensure your business continuity. These five practical tips discussed below will help you store online data securely for your business to get you rolling in the right direction.
1. Protection Against Malware
Ensure you prevent data threats by protecting your network and computer systems against malware. Companies can achieve maximum network protection through:
- Keeping emails clean. Anti-spam software helps to safeguard against unwanted emails, which create distractions and risks for employees.
- Ensure you apply the firewall. Turn your router’s onboard firewall on as it offers the first protection line.
- Ensure your pc is protected. Good security software ensures your pc is protected without interfering with your network or computer’s performance. For example, Syxsense is a patch management software that automatically secures online data with security holes. The purpose of security patches is to remediate vulnerabilities inside networks.
Also, essential reports like Security Risk Assessment (SRA), Task Summary, and Vulnerable devices are all available for automatic retrieval on-demand, allowing you to document any security strategy success.
2. Safeguard Your Passwords
Passwords are used to secure your data from getting into the wrong hands. Sometimes, passwords are frustrating to remember. However, the more complicated your password is, the more security is guaranteed. Ensure you use eight characters for the password and other non-standard characters and embed numbers. In case of a threat to your data, consider changing the passwords more often and using special characters. Your employees do not have to worry about remembering their passwords or risk writing them down as the password manager comes into place to save them.
Otherwise, businesses should guard their online data and passwords from brute force attacks. Such a feat is achieved via placing a maximum number of tries before suspending or disabling the account. Companies should never neglect other back door avenues that hackers can use to manipulate URLs and achieve unauthorized access. Therefore, the company should carry out routine testing of common vulnerabilities to minimize bypassing critical authentication mechanisms.
3. Make Sure to Dispose of Data Properly
Having the right methods to dispose of unwanted data is vital in decreasing the security breach risk. Ensuring that reused and retired devices and storage files have had their contents removed will help ensure that private company data will not be retrieved or fall into unwanted sources.
It would be best if you remembered that deleting individual files, reinstalling your operating system, and formatting your hard drive is not a guarantee that your records are gone. Therefore, you should ensure that your IT disposal colleague uses a device that overwrites all your files several times, ensuring it is unrecoverable.
Businesses should make a point to implement a sound record destruction strategy that will show how to discard hard drives, computers, phones, and flash drive after use. Therefore, businesses should use destructive methods like shredding, pulverizing, or technology that wipes information from hard drives.
4. Ensure to Keep Your Wireless Network Safe
In cases where you have a wireless network, be careful because hackers will find it easy to find the pass-code and get access to your data. You can safeguard your business by strengthening your router by using the most vital encryption setting you can. Additionally, you can make your network invisible by turning off the broadcasting function. Hackers will be disadvantaged because they cannot hack what they cannot see.
5. You Should Formulate a Plan for Personal Devices
The creation of this plan is most common in small to medium businesses, whereby you should ensure that you are aware of the risks associated with workers getting in and using their devices. A clear policy covering location tracking, internet follow-up issues, and relevant data deletion can be beneficial.
In conclusion, revising your digital habits by not clicking into suspicious links and carefully storing passwords will help keep your online data securely. Most businesses tend to grow when their information is secure because it gives them a foundation for being unique and private.
