Data Security Best Practices
Whether it’s sensitive personal information, financial data, or intellectual property security of data is crucial for any organization. A single data breach could damage a brand’s reputation, cause customer discontent and result in lawsuits, fines from the regulatory authorities and the cost of recovering.
To protect against the wide range of threats, businesses should focus on best practices that include data classification, auditing and monitoring, and encrypting data as it moves back and forth between databases and employees’ devices. Authentication, which is one of the primary technologies to block unauthorized access is also essential. To ensure that it operates properly, businesses should implement multifactor authentication. It is also possible to consider solutions that use cryptographic methods, tokens or biometrics.
Making employees aware of the importance of following security guidelines is another method to reduce risk. It is important that employees are taught how to lock laptops while they’re out of the office, not to open links in unsolicited email, and how to create unique and complicated passwords.
A robust backup plan for data is crucial. This can help reduce the impact of events that are uncontrollable, like power outages, or natural disasters that could destroy physical servers as well as the data that is stored on them. This is particularly crucial for companies that are subject to compliance requirements such as HIPAA in the US for healthcare organizations or PCI in Canada for those processing credit cards payments. It also helps reduce the potential impact of a breach by offering a fast and simple way to recover previously lost or corrupted information.