Even after immense amount of technological development, it is still seen that the businesses all throughout the world are facing the issue of data breach. No matter what the size of the business is, each business should pay maximum attention to the data security and protection by making every effort to keep the brand image intact. Each organization has valuable data thereby promoting the need to protect company data from hackers through the best of their efforts and should take every possible measure to safeguard the confidential information. There can be severe impacts of data leakage for the organization including hefty financial costs and destruction of the reputation of the organization.
Here, we have prepared an entire guide of some simple yet practical tips and tricks to keep the consumer data safe and sound. Let’s dive in and quickly understand the same in a thorough manner.
- Restrict data storage: An effective measure to prevent the data breach is to store only limited amount of data and gather only what is immediately required by the organization. Many companies are now revising their policies and practices of data collection and aggregation to only what is required by them. The organizations can limit the data collection to only what is useful and necessary for functioning. This includes the data required for sales, the processing of the order and marketing measures. It is a well-known fact that if the organization will collect the data in a limited manner, there will be less chances of attracting the malicious threats to your business.
- Limiting the employee access: Customer data is really valuable for every organization and therefore it should only be in the safe hands. A strict IT security policy must be employed all throughout the organization in order to keep the customer information safe and secure. Even within the organization, every employee should not have access to the customer data. There must be a strict procedure to handle the customer data; every employee should follow it properly. As a part of it, every member should handover the charges and must be immediately removed from all access rights while they are exiting from the organization.
- Security through SSL: Another important tip to protect your personal data includes security through SSL certificate as they are highly effective in safeguarding the user data. Keeping your website secure is important aspect and to do so, you need a proper SSL that fits with your site’s requirement. You can purchase desired type of SSL for website security like singe domain, wildcard SSL, multi domain or any other type of SSL. To get the benefit of useful features along with cost saving, you can go with a cheap wildcard SSL that will allow to secure unlimited subdomains including a main domain.
SSL cert is a great option that is utilized largely in the industry these days to secure against web threats. It follows https instead of http protocol to provide a secure web environment. There are multiple options that are available in the market at pocket friendly prices. We recommend you to conduct a thorough research and select the most doable option keeping in view the amount of security that you require for your business.
- Data storage at several locations: Data leakage has emerged as a great issue in the recent times. There is an urgent need to the data in a better manner by implementing better handling practices throughout the organization. In this regard, the companies should store their data at several places in isolation from one another. It includes student data both in off-line and online mode at reliable places. It must be made mandatory to encrypt the files in advance. It can serve as a great measure in cases of recovery or leakage of data.
- Training and educating the employees: A skilled team is definitely far better than an unskilled bunch having no idea of the data breaches. Even when the employees are well trained and educated in the same field yet there is a need of continuous training to make them aware of the recent developments. They should be informed continuously about the security policy of the company and must be trained in not taking those policies lightly. It may sound foundational yet it is observed that most of the data breaches are a result of the human error. This way the employees will be trained in not following the victim to the malicious activities of the hackers and will also know about the measures to take in case of an attack.
- Strong password for the win: Having a strong password implies that the organization is pretty serious about the safety of the consumer data. The password should be a combination of alphanumeric characters along with the special characters that are not easy to guess. It is a basic measure yet holds a lot of importance because it can be really tough for the attackers to go through the stage if you have a complex password. The password manager can also be employed in order to keep track of all the passwords that you have used for the different platforms. In this regard, we recommend you not to use the same password for all the different platforms as it can be very easy for the cyber criminals to get hold of all your accounts in a single go.
- Revise the security features: Security of an organization depends largely on the kind of tools that it is using to safeguard the user data. It is mandatory that the tool that is employed by the organization must be safe and sound and should not invite unnecessary issues related to security. Though every organization uses an ideal tool that is not vulnerable to any form of attack yet there is an urgent requirement of exploration and analysis of the new and innovative tools that are available in the market with time. But make sure that if you are updating to the new tool, it should essentially and high security standards in totality.
- Get rid of the sensitive data: Apart from the fact that the companies should not store the crucial user information, an attempt can be made in the form of deleting the sensitive data that is no longer required. Now you can protect company data from hackers by the simple measure of moving the data that is not required straight to the recycle bin and then empty out the recycle bin so that it cannot be restored by a single click. The data should be so discarded so that it cannot be recovered in case of any malicious activity or threat or in an attempt to take away the valuable sensitive user data from your organization.
- Avoid public Wifi: While training the employees, they should also be guided in the best security practices which include not using public Wi-Fi for the ease. It is mostly saying that these Wi-Fi connections are accessed by the hackers as well and it becomes really easy to steal the company data through the shared connection. Every employee should either use virtual private network or secure home connections that are private nature In order to get complete security.
CONCLUSION
Statistics suggest that about 60% of the high profile cyber attacks were meant for small to midsize companies so as to downgrade and impact them negatively. It is a common belief that the cyber attacks are executed in order to enter the home system of an organization but we cannot solely blame the attackers and get away with our own responsibility to safeguard the system. In this manner, every organization should work towards the betterment of their data security measures that can nullify their chances of data leakage. All the above mentioned measures including use of strong password, revising the security policies and practices, educating the employees towards data security, creating backups and storing multiple copies of data can put you way ahead in terms of security if practiced properly.
Investing in right type of ssl certificate can also help you in keeping the company’s data safe and sound. Even the smallest of data leakage can pose serious impact on the reputation of the company and continue to cause harm even after years. This is why all the above listed measures must be followed rigorously for the best results.
