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Written by: James Ponds
Every business needs to consider what it can do to uphold and enhance its data security. Here are ten ways that you can protect your business from security breaches and keep private data protected.
Provide Cybersecurity Training to Staff
In many instances, data security breaches result from one person making a misstep online such as downloading an attachment from a suspicious email or conducting a transaction on an insecure site. Creating written policies for staff and offering training opportunities about security. Train your staff about what is cybersecurity, what are the possible ramifications of a cybersecurity breach, and what they can do in their individual job duties to protect your business’ data.
Ensure Compliance With Statutory Regulations
Some states have laws governing what businesses must do to protect the security of individuals’ private information. If your information processes and maintains any data belonging to individual consumers, it’s important that you follow any applicable statutory regulations. Compliance will make your operations safer and following them can help spare you from legal liability.
Build a Secure Infrastructure With Firewalls
Sustaining strong firewall protections on your activities online will fortify your cyber infrastructure. You’ll be safeguarded against attempts to infiltrate your network and access private data.
Secure Networks and Access Points
It’s important to remember that not only individual workstations and servers need to be protected; networking equipment as well as specific access points and other equipment connected to your wireless network need to be secured.
Scan for Virus’ Regularly
Your business should have a protocol for regularly scanning for viruses and malware. You can set for scans to take place automatically and send you a full report on the scan’s findings.
Use Password Protection
Every time that your staff logs into your company’s network or email server, they should be prompted to enter a password. People shouldn’t be able to stay logged in indefinitely. In addition, it’s preferable to avoid password conventions such as individual’s birthdays or names because it will be too easy for people to use one another’s passwords. If a third party learns one password, he or she may be able to quickly ascertain every employee’s password.
Create User Privileges
Reducing the number of employees that have access to protected information can mitigate the risk of a cyberattack. If individuals don’t need access to private information for their job duties, they shouldn’t have it. Creating user permissions when you set up new users can help solve this problem. A user with a full range of permissions can access all of the files that are stored on your network or cloud, and a user with limited permissions will have access to only the files and programs that they need.
Send Encrypted Emails
When you or your staff transmit sensitive information, you should use encrypted emails. This method for sending emails requires users to use secure passwords or complete an additional verification step to read the contents of an email. Use a program that makes it easy to send encrypted emails, so staff won’t skip this important procedure.
Filter Emails
A good filtering program can help keep emails that originate from questionable sources out of your personnel’s inboxes. Suspicious emails can be blocked, flagged, or moved to a spam folder. Filtering will significantly reduce the possibility that staff will inadvertently download a virus or malware.
Give Staff Tools to Protect Data When Working Remotely
Some of your data vulnerability may result from staff working remotely. When they use a workstation that isn’t equipped with all of the security protection that you have in the office, their activity online may leave your business’ information susceptible to interception. Provide your staff with security programs that will enable them to have the same security at home that they do in the office.
Strengthening your business’ cybersecurity is well worth the investment. Get expert help to determine what you can do to make your operations safer in order to prevent data loss, exposure to fraud, and legal liability problems.