If you are like most people who find data protection as a marginalized subsection of cybersecurity, then your company’s data is at constant risk. We are not trying to scare you here, but facts are facts.

Data has become an integral part of our lives. We use it to analyze market fluctuations, measure the effectiveness, and learn about our business (what’s going well, what’s not going that well, and what requests our immediate attention).

As one of the most valuable assets businesses can have today (because data helps us make a well-informed decision to generate continuous streams of revenue), it is something that cybercriminals always try to steal.

Why Your Company Needs a Good Data Security Strategy

Let’s make one thing crystal clear – the data your company collects contains confidential information about your customers, workers, and business processes – and if your data falls into the wrong hands or becomes unavailable, you could be in big trouble.

The thing is that most business owners think that those things won’t happen to them-  but remember, it is just a matter of time before you become a victim. Did you know that there is a hacker attack every 39 seconds? So, think again if you can afford the cost of neglecting cybersecurity and data protection for small businesses.

The Elements of a Strong Data Protection Strategy

There’s no doubt that cybercriminals are smart and constantly evolve, making it hard even for those who invest crazy amounts into cybersecurity to protect against them. Fear not because there are several things you can do to strengthen your data security posture and keep those intruders far away.

#1 Define Sensitive Data

Sensitive data is any type of data that, if exposed, stolen, or lost, could harm the data owner, lead to terrible reputation damage, or financially destroy your organization. So, one of the first things toward developing a comprehensive data protection strategy is to find out which data you collect meets our definition of sensitive.

#2 Data Risk Analysis

After defining which data is important, you should conduct an in-depth audit of all the data you are storing, asking the following questions: where is the data stored, what value does it have for your company, who can access it, and so on and so forth – you need see if there are any significant potential threats to it.

#3 Data Backup and Recovery

An indispensable part of any sturdy data protection plan is the ability to recover from any cyber attack. A DBR (Data Backup and Recovery) plan is a practice of regularly backing up all your business-vital data so that you can restore whatever you need after a disaster or a cyber incident and get back to your work. This means that you need to determine which files you need to back up, how often, and where you are going to store them.

#4 Data Breach Prevention

We always highlight the importance of taking all possible precautions to protect your sensitive data from different types of breaches. To do so, you need to block attacks on your infrastructure and network and prevent unauthorized access to internal and external parties. Those practices usually include firewalls, antiviruses, and other similar tools.

#5 Data Access Management

One of the best ways to prevent unauthorized people from accessing your data is to have robust data access management, which means you need to apply strong data access control. This way, only users with permission can access your data.

#6 Data Standards and Regulatory Compliance

There’s a good reason why we have standards and regulations. Various industries have their own data privacy regulations, meaning you should find regulations for your industry and adhere to them. If you are not compliant, you are risking losing client data and being sued.

#7 Data Encryption

When we talk about data protection best practices, we must mention data encryption. You can implement it to protect both data at rest and data in transit. Even if someone steals it or “intercepts” it, it will be useless for malicious actors since they won’t be able to read it and use it. In fact, you could also encrypt all employee communications via video, voice, and text.

#8 Involve Your Employees in Security Awareness

It is of the utmost importance to educate all individuals working in your company, even those who have nothing to do with your sensitive data. Everyone should clearly understand how careful they need to be regarding data security.

Employ SkyNet as Part of Your Data Protection Strategy

The best thing you can do is to protect your business with cybersecurity experts like us. With our end-to-end encryption and other military-grade security tools, you can rest assured that you have an impenetrable security network and your data is safe.