Although most business owners don’t realize it, the number of cyber-attacks increases every day. Hence, no matter how small or large your company is, data security is, perhaps, one of the most important things that you can focus on, especially since one single breach could seriously harm your business.
This is why data security needs to be on top of your to-do list. But, what can you do to improve the security of the data you gather? Are there some solutions that you could implement? To make things easier for you, we’ve prepared a list of 8 solutions that you could implement right away:
1. First Things First, Your Passwords Must Be Strong
The very first measure – and the easiest one to implement – is to make sure that both you and your employees utilize strong passwords. Simple passwords such as “12345”, date of birth, or a pet’s name won’t be sufficient and it’ll only make it easier for a hacker to breach your data. Thus, before you do anything else that we mention on this list, you should focus on the passwords you use for accessing your business data.
To ensure that you create strong passwords, you must use a combination of several things, including capital & lowercase letters, one or more symbols, as well as numbers. So, for instance, your password might look like this “DataSecurity21!”. The more characters and numbers you choose to use, the stronger your password will be. Additionally, you must avoid using things such as personal information including birth dates.
2. Firewalls Were Made For a Reason
If you really want to protect your entire business network, you should also consider setting up firewalls. Why is this important? Well, firewalls will monitor and control all the Internet traffic that is coming or leaving your organization, which means that, in some cases, they could protect your data from breaches. Keep in mind, in order to ensure that it’s reliable and that it actually functions, you should pay for a firewall, instead of opting for one that is free.
3. Antivirus Programs Are Here to Stay
When it comes to protecting your data, there is no denying, anti-malware and antivirus programs are essential. After all, these programs were designed to search for, monitor, detect, prevent, and get rid of any malware – such as worms, trojans, etc. – that might threaten your business, thus, ensure that you implement this safety measure as well. Like the aforementioned solution, you should pay for antivirus as well.
4. Update, Update, Update
Unfortunately, many of us will simply click on “remind me later” whenever we get a notification that an update is available for one of the programs or operating systems that we’re utilizing, but, this is one of the biggest data security mistakes we make. Your smartphone, computers, laptops, tablets, and any other devices have to be updated frequently. Why? Well, most updates will feature data security patches, hence, installing them is crucial.
5. Remember That Smartphones And Laptops Are Portable
Laptops and smartphones are portable, which is why there is a higher risk of breaches, but there is also a higher risk that these devices will get stolen. When it comes to laptops, one of the easiest things that you could do is to encrypt them. By doing so, this simple solution, plus a strong password will make all of your business laptops unreadable, even if they get stolen or hacked in the future.
The same can be said for the smartphones you and your employees utilize. Like laptops, they can also get stolen, which means that they’re also a security threat for your organization. They can also be encrypted, you could also opt for strong passwords that’ll protect the data on the device, and another thing that you could do is to switch on the automatic lock-out feature. If it gets stolen, you could use the wiping process for deleting all data on the device.
6. Backups Are Crucial
If there is one thing that you must take away from our article, it’s the fact that you must schedule backups to external hard drives or cloud platforms such as Soladrive. Why should you do this? Well, it’ll ensure that your data is stored safely and properly. Additionally, if there is ever a breach, you’ll still have the data you might need for operating your business. You should choose to back up the info at least once a week and by doing so, you’ll increase the security in your organization.
7. Training Your Staff is a Must
A lot of individuals don’t realize it, but downloading different programs, files, and app, opening emails that aren’t from a familiar source, and clicking on a wide range of links could easily infect your PCs, laptops, as well as your entire IT infrastructure. Because of this, one of the most important things that you could do is to ensure that you train your staff properly. What does this mean that you should do?
Well, it’s quite easy, you must train your employees to recognize dangerous online sources, suspicious emails, as well as bad links. Luckily, there is a wide range of online sources that could help you figure out what you’ll need to teach them, hence, if you don’t want to opt for a professional company that’ll help you with training your staff members, you should go through some tutorials and guides that’ll help you learn what you need to do.
8. Examine Your Current Security Measures
Last on our list, but equally important as all the other points we mentioned is that you should examine your current security measure before implementing new ones. Why should you do this? Well, by doing so, you can see whether or not specific measures have to be improved and entirely replaced, and in some cases, you might conclude that they’re sufficient enough for protecting the data your business gathers. To find out more about managed file transfer software visit https://www.goanywhere.com/solutions/managed-file-transfer.
Conclusion
Though most business owners think that it’s expensive and daunting to protect their data, it isn’t. And, if you opt for implementing some or most of the solutions we mentioned in our list above, you’ll be able to make the entire process easier and less time-consuming, but more importantly, you can ensure that your data is 100% protected.
Since you’re now aware of all the solutions you could opt for, you really should drop everything that you’re doing. Instead, go through our article one more time, determine what are the best solutions for your organization, and then start implementing them in order to keep all your business info safe and protected from external attacks.
