Aside from providing customers with the best products and services, businesses must prioritize data security. The increasing cases of data breaches, with their severe impacts including operational paralysis, identity theft, and financial losses, underscore the critical importance of this issue.

Given its impacts, businesses incorporate several strategies to safeguard their business data. If this is your first time creating your strategy or you want to strengthen your existing data security strategy, here are 10 ways you can incorporate:

Create A Data Security Program

The first proactive step any business should take is to create a data security program. This program outlines how the business will protect all the data it collects and uses, as well as how it will respond to any data security threats.

Review Your Passwords

One of the ways cyberattackers compromise businesses is through stolen and easily guessed passwords. Encourage your team to use strong and difficult-to-guess passwords, such as a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. If needed, recommend using a password manager, as this tool can help generate strong passwords while saving them on the device or in the cloud, so your team doesn’t have to worry about remembering them.

Have 2FA Activated

Two-factor authentication, or 2FA, adds an extra layer of security to your business’s database and other business programs or applications. When it is active, users must verify their identity before accessing the data they are trying to check, in addition to entering their password. Verification can be done either through an additional PIN, biometric or set passcode. Once verification is complete, they will be granted access to the necessary files.

Use A Bring Your Own Device Program

You can also safeguard your business data by having your team use their own devices when working on projects or accessing files remotely. This prevents cyberattackers from paralysing the business’s ecosystem since different devices have their own unique code that is hard to determine separately.

Educate Your Team

You should also educate your team on the cybersecurity strategies you are implementing, so they can apply them effectively in their work. Some examples of teachings you can incorporate into your cybersecurity strategy include identifying cyberattacks, learning how to respond to them, and knowing who to contact when something happens. It is also the perfect time to encourage the team to report any threats they have identified and to continue showing your appreciation, even if the report is not a genuine concern about a cyberattack. 

Constantly Update Your Software

Since cyberattacks are constantly evolving, it is essential to keep your business applications and software up to date to protect against these threats. Manufacturers continually update software and applications to protect users from the latest cybersecurity threats. To reduce your worries, you can set this software to update automatically, allowing it to run in the background.

Use Cloud Storage

A great way to protect your business data is by using cloud storage, which keeps the data off-site and makes it easily accessible. Aside from offering storage, these services also provide automatic backups, ensuring you always have access to the latest versions of your data and protecting it from cyber threats.

Save Physical Documents Properly

Your digital data isn’t the only business data you should protect; your physical documents are also key business assets that you should safeguard. Since it is a physical copy, these documents are easy to lose, which can cause problems for the business’s operations. Ensure that any critical physical documents are adequately secured, with access limited to a select number of employees. The files must also be reviewed regularly and shredded if it is no longer needed.

Create An Explicit Employee Agreement

All employee contracts, regardless of rank, must clearly state that employees are prohibited from disclosing any sensitive business information. If employees share any form of information with others through various channels, the data will be vulnerable to compromise. You should also include a nondisclosure agreement to ensure that your business data is secured even if your existing security measures are compromised.

Have A Data Breach Response

Finally, you can also protect your business data by having a data breach response plan in place. This will reduce the impact of any cyberattack on your business and identify the appropriate course of action when a cyberattack does occur.

Whether it is physical data or digital data, you need to take the time and effort to protect it from any threat because it can paralyse your business if something happens to it. With the proper security protocols in place, you can minimise the damage brought by any danger, even if you cannot entirely stop them from happening. Use the 10 tips above to frame your protections for your business data and adjust them accordingly to meet your specific needs.

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