3 essential ways to strengthen your business data security

For any business big or small, business data is an asset that they cannot afford to compromise at any cost. With a huge amount of data, from employee details to the credit card details of customers, stored in the form of vulnerable electronic records, the loss of even a single data record can result into millions of dollars of loss.

Detections made by Quick Heal Security Labs over the months suggest IT/ITES, Professional Services, Manufacturing, Education and Healthcare to be amongst the top few industries to have clocked the highest malware detections in 2018. The risk of future attacks can only be expected to grow with more advanced and sophisticated malware making their presence felt every now and then.

So, what’s the solution?

While there are many ways to help you strengthen the security of your business data, 3 of the essential and must-follow ways include:

#1 Employee Training

Since, the responsibility for security of business data lies mostly in the hands of employees primarily handling the data, it is very important that employees are trained regarding secure data management practices. In addition, it is also essential for employees to understand the importance of immediately reporting internal data breaches since, at times, these can have devastating large scale impacts if delayed.

#2 Identifying Areas of Vulnerability

Unless and until you identify the major areas of vulnerability for your business data to external exploitation, it can be very difficult to devise an action plan. Thus, in order to better secure your business data, it is important to conduct an internal audit to first identify the areas of vulnerability and then create a robust and detailed plan of action, to address each of these vulnerabilities. Your action plan can necessarily include steps like:

• Monitoring and training of employees
• Implementation of best data management practices
• Ensuring quick incident-response procedures
• Proper documentation of remediation steps

#3 Ensuring Software Updates

Talking of vulnerabilities, outdated software programs are a major vulnerability point for cybercriminals to exploit. Thus, it is important that you regularly update your operating system, software programs and antivirus license to the latest versions and don’t count on expired software, to mitigate the risks of devastating malware or Ransomware attacks. The best way to protect your data against such external threats is to opt for automatic updates, so that you don’t miss on any important update.

Several businesses continue to be ignorant about the necessity for data security, but fail to realize the amount of financial loss that they may have to face because of this ignorance.