Article posted by RedTeam

In the 21st Century, it’s safe to say that we can’t rely on the privacy of anything living on the internet. Any individual linked to the internet through social media, mobile applications, email, and even cloud software has to worry about their data being used by advertisers, hackers, and identity thieves. There’s no guarantee of perfect privacy, but you can find various programs to attack the problem from different directions. Things like VPNs to email protectors and scanners that sound the alarm if your data pops up on the dark web.

Safeguarding data means being proactive against attacks, threats, and disasters that may cause a business or organization’s data to become defenseless. Keeping your information secure is a lot easier to do now. Here are some steps you can take to protect your data and some tech to use.

3 Simple Steps to Guard Your Data

Know what data you’re storing. If you want to protect your data, the first thing you should do is know what you’re storing. Of course, all data is important, but it’s essential to know the critical and sensitive information. These can be account records, transactions, customer lists and contracts, personal identification information, and employee records. Much more can be classified as sensitive data, but knowing which ones are a priority for you is a good start.

Know where your data is stored. We live in a world where technology is continuously evolving. Your information can be scattered between these different locations between laptops, smartphones, tablets, drives, and the cloud. Knowing where your data is stored and what type of information is critical for the next step of how to protect it.

Protecting your data. Now that you know the type of information you have and where it’s stored, you can now figure out the best way to protect that data. Safeguarding your data includes strong passwords, encryption, limited access, and multi-factor authentication.

Threats to your data security won’t ever go away, especially with how technology is advancing. But it’s always smart to take appropriate measures and use advanced security programs to safeguard your data effectively. If you’re unfamiliar with specific programs, here are some popular tech trends to help you start.

3 Data Security Technologies Your Company Should Invest In

Over the past three decades, as companies have created new security technologies to help defend businesses and consumers, attackers have quickly adapted. Most technologies update their systems to make them more secure against attacks, but often attackers find a way past these changes.

As technology advances, there needs to be new security technologies to combat the everchanging digital world. Luckily some recent tech trends will help you and your company secure private information.

1) Encryption. Many industry regulations require specific data to be encrypted, but it wouldn’t hurt if your organization considered safeguarding other types of data too. The most common data to be encrypted are emails, messages, usernames, and passwords. Sensitive data like intellectual property and personal information of customers and employees can also be encrypted. Encrypting your data acts as the first line of defense to protecting your company and valuable information.

2) Cyber Insurance. A data breach can have far-reaching consequences, causing financial losses and affecting an organization’s operations and compliance in the short term. According to the Ponemon Institute’s Cost of a Data Breach Report, the global average total cost of a data breach in 2020 cost $3.86 million. On top of that, the United States has the highest country average cost with $8.64 million. The high price of data breaches has encouraged companies to invest in cyber risk insurance.

3) Disaster Recovery Technology. Many companies have a data backup and recovery plan in an offsite location or cloud service. Cyber incidents usually happen without notice and can go undetected for days, weeks, months, and even years. It’s crucial to restore data to its clean, pre-breach condition. Purpose-built resiliency technologies can automatically recover data to its correct state and enable companies to find their footing quickly after a breach! With this technology, your company will be able to recover vital data quickly and correctly.

Safeguarding your data is essential to protecting your company and its assets. As technology advances and allows ease of access, security measures should also be as advanced as possible. Security threats won’t be slowing down anytime soon, but advanced security solutions enable companies to safeguard business data more effectively. As a result, organizations can mitigate business risk, reduce liability and provide customers with greater confidence. Here’s to keeping your company safe!