Prevent Security Breaches With 5 Data Management Best Practices

Security breaches happen with incredible frequency nowadays. This can be very disconcerting for business owners, like yourself. If you do not have IT security procedures in place to protect your data, your business could become a victim of cyber crime. Thankfully, there are some quick fixes you can make to protect business data and prevent security breaches at your organization. Find out how to prevent security breaches with these 5 top IT security best practices below.

Train Employees

The first line of defense when it comes to cyber attacks is your employees. Make sure to train them in cyber security best practices. Train them about how to use 2 factor authentication, how to create strong passwords and how to identify suspicious email attachments. This will help prepare them to act as your foot soldiers against hackings, ransomware and other cyber crimes. That makes your business data safer and more secure, which is the ultimate goal for business IT security.

Use Cloud Services

Using cloud storage for your business data also helps protect your business from cyber attacks and other security breaches. This provides you with a greater amount of control over your company’s data. Cloud servers have some of the best security procedures in place, which provides added protection for your data. Cloud services also use encryption to protect your data. That gives your business three layers of IT protections for your data. If you want to prevent security breaches and do your IT due diligence, store all your business data in the cloud.

Destroy Before You Dispose

Before you dispose of any hard drives or other gadgets, like laptops or CPUs, make sure to destroy the data they contain. Simply deleting the data before throwing out the hard drive is not enough. You need to download software that permanently wipes the memory of these devices. Otherwise, a maligned, tech-savvy individual may be able to recover files and breach your security. Make sure you wipe data clear before disposing of your hardware. Then, to be doubly certain, destroy the hardware itself too before throwing it in the trash. This is one of the easiest things to do to protect yourself from data breaches that could cost you your business.

Encrypt Data

Data encryption is a must have element of any IT strategy if you want to avoid data breaches. A recent study showed that of the companies that experienced loss of data from security breaches, 60% of them did not encrypt their data. Let this be a lesson to you. Encrypt business data. This reduces the chances that an attacker can access your company’s data. It also reduces your liability should a security breach happen. This is one of the most important data security best practices to enact as soon as possible to protect your business from cyber attacks.

Disable Accounts

Disable employee accounts once they leave the company. Do not wait even a single day to take care of this. Even if the former employee left on good terms, this is not a chance you want to take. Disable all of the former employee’s accounts once you get word of their leaving. If they use company-issued devices, make sure to recuperate the gadgets as soon as possible too. This will help you protect your devices and accounts from malicious attacks from former employees or outside hackers.

If you are a business owner, IT security should be one of your biggest concerns. This is especially true in today’s business environment, where security breaches have become old hat. Protect your company from data breaches by using the business IT security best practices mentioned above. These IT security strategies are sure to protect you from hackers and reduce your liability in the event of a successful attack. Once you have these practices in place, you can rest a bit easier knowing you have done all you can to protect customer data and prevent cyber attacks at your organization.

Photo from https://www.pcmag.com/news/348095/report-yahoo-to-confirm-data-breach-affecting-200m-account