Data protection is becoming more increasingly important as the tech world continues to evolve. Hacking is becoming more common to steal information and the customer is the one having to pay for it.
But how does one go about ensuring their business’s data and its customer’s data are safe?
Here are the 5 best security practices to ensure your company’s data is safe.

1. Only Save What You Need

A common problem still left over from the paper document days is the need to save everything. Whether it be the name, address, what day you visited a specific store, saving everything is an outdated means.

If you always want to be on the safe side, be sure to only save what you need for internal usage and for customers. Customers are the most at risk because of security breaches because it exposes so many at one time, rather than just one companies expenses.

It is common for websites to save data about browsing and website usage along with saving passwords and personal information. The best way to go about data protection is to sometimes ensure that there is no data for anyone to take.

2. Don’t Slack Off With Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is often pushed off as something that is unnecessary because of the lack of hacking to small businesses. These ignorant thoughts can easily lead to the downfall of a company.

Even small businesses are at risk of getting it with a cyber attack that can lead to thousands of exposed customers. It can also target companies and their finances, so if a separate bank account or credit card is set up, you are putting the company even further at risk.

Getting together to ensure that a great cybersecurity team is set up is important. Whether you decide to outsource or higher someone in-house, it is one thing that you do not want to slack off on.

This means setting up firewalls as lines of defense and ensuring that your wifi is secure. Unsecured wifi is one of the fastest ways for hackers to steal data from both the company and the customer.

Keep a password that’s complicated and not easily cracked by only being a few letters or numbers long. Best practices for protecting data also call for changing this password every 90 days to ensure that it is not exposed.

3. Regulate Employee Controls

Employee fraud can be another big issue. What if the person attacking the company is from the inside rather than the out?

Ensure employee permissions are set accordingly to make sure they do not have access to sensitive information. This can mean setting up users strictly for the employees that do not have administrator access.

Administrator access for users is one of the most common reasons for attacks. This means that if someone who is not an employee gets ahold of the employee’s credentials and they have administrator access, it could spell disaster.

For best practices, this can also mean setting up your own employee account as a user rather than an administrator. Even if we think we are doing everything right, sometimes information can slip through the cracks and lead to a data breach.

4. Ensure Sensitive Data Is Encrypted and Backed Up

Sensitive data is a pretty broad term. It can vary anywhere between important business documents to a simple picture of your company’s logo. Anything you deem as sensitive should be encrypted.

Encryption is when your data is constantly being “mixed up” as random strings. This ensures that if someone gets to the base level of your data without proper credentials, that all they see a random string of text data that does not translate to anything.

It is also important to back up this data to a separate hard drive in case of a hard drive failure. Most companies will ensure that there is little to no data loss in the event of hardware failure because this can ultimately set back companies’ years while trying to fix and replace all the information lost.

Backing up data can be done in house or through cloud storage. In house data back up ensures that you always know what level of security is behind your back up and who has the information to get in.

Cloud back up allows the free up of space in the office and does not have the same upfront costs that come with personal hardware. The downside is not having your data right in front of you. There is also the not know of who has access to your information, no matter how trusted they say their back up is.

5. Plan For the Worse

People often consider preparing for the worse as paranoid, but it is far from. Planning for the worse allows for every plan to have to fail before getting to your data. Even if the data is breached, you can have plans instilled to ensure that there is minimal to no data loss and that the data seen is minimal.

It sets up a plan of action in the face of scrutiny. Pair up with your cybersecurity team and come up with contingency plans that ensure if someone at the top has their data breached, a lower level entrusted employee can then act as the backup to shut things down.

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Data breaches are going to become more commonplace and they may become more sophisticated as tech continues to evolve. Always be prepared.

The Best Security Practices Keep Your Data Safe

Keeping up with the best security practices will always be a good thing. It can ensure there is comfort for both your business and your customers when they are trusting you with their data. Be prepared, as it is always better to be safe than sorry.

If you want to learn more about the tech world and all the news that comes with it, be sure to check out our other articles. If you know a business that has been slacking on their data security, be sure to share this article with them.