Data is your business’s soul. Your company runs on data as vehicles run on fuel. Data includes customer information as well as company information, both of which are crucial to your business. So much so that data security can make or break your business. Regardless of the cause, it can cost you a large amount of money trying to fix your data breach. What is more, it can damage your brand's image and reputation.
The average cost of data breach is estimated to be $150 per second.
The average cost of data breach is estimated to be $150 per second. Ours is a digital age, and cyber attacks happen almost on a daily basis. Data breach could be the result of several things. These include cyber attacks, employee negligence or malice, and an outdated operating system or anti-malware. Whether it is a large corporation or a new startup, everyone is vulnerable if they do not take steps to protect their data.
You can follow these tips to avoid any loss of brand data:
Have Strong Passwords:
The more complex a password, the more protection it provides. Although stronger passwords are a nuisance to remember, make sure you do remember the password, instead of writing it down. To create a strong password, you can use a combination of letters, special characters, and numbers. Avoid using your ID or your date of birth as your password as anyone can easily guess them.
Try a random password generator.
Protecting Data In The Cloud:
Storing data in the cloud has become an important part in our digitized world. What this essentially means is, your data will not be saved on your local computer but on a cloud server. The security of these cloud servers depend on cloud service providers, therefore, it is important to choose a trustable cloud service provider like Citrix Cloud.
Efficient Management Of Data:
The more information you collect, the more you will spend your resources to protect it. Avoid collecting unnecessary data. Also, if you only need some data temporarily, make sure you discard it once you are done using it. You should have a formal and detailed IT security policy to efficiently manage and protect data. Other than that, a maintenance strategy on what to do in case of a data breach may also come in handy. You can use the services of Asset Health to manage and maintain your data.
Regularly Update Your Software:
Software vulnerability is something hackers are after. Newer versions of software remove these vulnerabilities. Updating your security settings and using the latest versions of operating systems and other software can prevent hackers exploiting vulnerabilities of the outdated versions.
By ignoring updates, you could be leaving your system exposed to well-known weaknesses.
These updates act as patches fixing open holes and closing back doors in cyber security. By ignoring updates, you could be leaving your system exposed to well-known weaknesses.
Encryption:
Encrypting your company’s data is one of the best ways to protect it. When we encrypt data, what happens is data scrambling. This means that the data cannot be decoded without a password anymore. In other words, encrypted data simply becomes useless without a password. One does not need to be a computer genius to encrypt data as there are various online programs that can help you with this. You can encrypt all kinds of data in most of your devices yourself.
Back Up:
Even if you are not attacked by a hacker, there is a chance to lose all your data. If your system or the network crashes, you can lose all that you were working on.
Not only should you back up, but you should also test the backup.
Therefore, it is very important to back up your data. Not only should you back up, but you should also test the backup. This is important, so that you ensure that you can recover your data and use it too.
Data Fortress:
The best way to avoid the loss of your data through any means is to make your business devices into a so-called data fortress. Your data fortress will then be ready for all kinds of attacks and will also be able to withhold them. Additionally, you can use firewalls. These will prevent any malicious program from infecting your computer via the Internet.
Finally, to make your devices a complete data fortress, you should disconnect your webcam and microphone when not in use. If your webcam is attached to your laptop, you can add a sticker to cover it. Applying these tips, you are giving your brand data all-round protection.
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