Having secure data is vital in today’s world, especially if you’re handling sensitive information for clients. So much personal and sensitive information is shared via the Internet that it can be scary to think about what could happen if it fell into the wrong hands. Your business could be in serious jeopardy, not only because you could lose clients due to their lack of trust, but you could also have your own information used for malicious purposes. To safeguard your sensitive data from those who might abuse it, here are three ways to best protect your systems from having your data attacked.
Hackers are generally lazy about the way they gain access to information. You might not need something super intense, but should implement some sort of encryption. This makes your data incomprehensible for any viruses that could try to steal your information.
The simple act of encrypting your data or saving it in an encrypted format can keep your data safe from a world of problems. But to increase this security, PCMag.com advises keeping your encrypted information stored on an external hard drive, just to ensure that your data is even more secure.
If your information or data gets stolen or corrupted, there’s no telling what it will look like if or when you take a look at it again. If the hack is bad enough, you may even have to scrap what you had and go back to a previous version. When this happens, you will be glad you consistently backed up your important files. According to Entreprenuer.com, a business working with other businesses should completely backup everything once a week and should also perform smaller backups each night. This will help to ensure that you will always have your most current and accurate information backed up, just in case something unforeseen happens to your data. It’s also a good idea to have your backed up information saved on various platforms, like on your server, but also in the cloud. As the old saying goes, you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket.
Regardless of how careful you are about protecting your data, if someone really wants to target you and your information, it can happen. It’s nearly impossible to plan for every potential attack. So if you do become compromised, you’ll want to have a plan for how to proceed. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, about 40 to 60 percent of business don’t recover from massive disasters like this. So to feel confident that this won’t happen to your business, it’s important to know what you’ll do if you ever run into problems with security. Outline who will take care of what type of situation, what the priorities will be, and how you plan to move past this tragic event. Simply having a plan of attack, even if it’s not super solid, can help you, your employees, and your clients retain a sense of calm in the event that your data or information becomes compromised.
While no one ever wants to get into a situation where they suffer from a data breach, it does happen. According to this infographic, data breaches rose globally by 13 percent in 2012. To protect yourself and your business from suffering massively from this type of event, try implementing the above three tips in order to be as prepared as possible.