With more and more companies moving nearly everything online, there is an increased risk of cyber crime, which has been on the rise the last few years. As a result, it is more important than ever to exhibit good security practices at your company, no matter how big or small you might be. While you might think hackers and criminals only seek out large companies, that is not the case.
With that in mind, this article is going to take a closer look at a few different security measures your business should take to ensure that the information and data of your customers and company itself are safe. Without the proper security precautions being taken, your company could not only lose a lot of money, but also the trust of your customers.
Mask Your Data
In a normal company, several employees are working with sensitive and private customer information each and every day. While most of the time things are fine, there are those times where an employee might accidentally leak some information or compromise data in some way. To prevent this from occurring, consider using a dynamic data masking software.
This software will mask all of the important data and information your company works with to prevent it from being compromised if a leak or hack were to occur. Users and employees will still be able to work with the database, but won’t have access to the data it contains. The actual data remains intact, of course, it is just masked to prevent any issues surrounding security.
Educate All Employees
No matter how good your security practices and protocols are, they are useless without a staff that is educated on them. As a result, you need to ensure that all of your employees are educated on cyber security and know what to do in certain situations. With most data breaches actually being caused by human error, educating employees is of the utmost importance.
They need to know how to make strong passwords, how to treat data with respect, how to spot and avoid phishing and other scams and more. While many companies simply train their employees on cyber security in house, others will enlist the help of a company or service that specializes in cyber security training. While this may come with a larger cost, think of it more like an investment in the security of your company than a standard cost.
Regularly Back Up Information and Data
While attacks do occur, they are not the only reason why data or information can become compromised or lost. Things as simple as power outages, machine failure and other unforeseen circumstances can lead to data being lost. Because of this ever-present threat, you need to be sure to keep backups and update them in a regular manner.
When it comes to backups, you can either do them manually or automatically. Manual backups are often kept by copying information and data to an external hard drive to make sure it remains safe and automatic backups can often be done through the cloud, so even if a device or machine fails, your data will be safe. Of course, be sure to check and access your backup every now and then to make sure it works as expected.
Access to your company’s data is paramount. You must protect backups from ransomware so that your data can be quickly recovered in the event it is encrypted. In addition to ransomware, you need to ensure that backups are not able to be accessed by anyone who doesn’t have proper permissions as well.
Hopefully this article has been able to help you learn some new practices to help you up the security at your small business. There has never been a more important time for company security, so be sure to do all you can to protect the sensitive information you use.
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Founder Dinis Guarda
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