Protecting Your Business Data

The statistics for cybercrime, online fraud, and data theft can be pretty disturbing to look at, especially if you are a small business owner. Nearly half of small businesses asked reported that they were victims to online crimes, in the form of malware infections, hacking attacks, and data breaches. And if you have been following along in the news recently, you will have seen how much business data is breached and what it can cost you.

Taking steps to take care of your business and keeping it safe and secure, is imperative for your business. So with all of that in mind, here are some of the things that you can be doing to help to make your business more secure.

Know Your Data

You will have a lot of data for your business, but knowing the data in your business is really important; not all data is created equal. To start off with, think about the data that is business-critical and what data is sensitive data. Then you can plan where each will be stored. Simple audits can be achieved just by thinking about what might happen if there is a breach and where it can occur, such as financial data, employee records, or customer records.

Having access management solutions that work for you is really important too, so that once the data is stored, it can be kept as secure as possible, with only the people you will allow to have access to being able to see it. 

When you understand all about the likely effect that a breach could have  on your business, you will have a blueprint for the impact that it will have on your business. High-risk data needs to be secured appropriately, and you can spend more of your resources to make it that way. 

Manage Passwords

Passwords are a really important part of your business, and they should be at the core of your security policy. But making sure that the passwords are enforced isn’t something that is easy. This means that passwords need to be changed regularly, as well as have your team trained to know about the importance of passwords.

Everyone in your business needs to understand your company security policies and know why these things are important. The good news is that this kind of training doesn’t need to be expensive. It can be integrated quite easily into the staff-induction process, and then you can do refresher training with them. 

Use of The Cloud

The idea of encrypting things can seem a little controversial, but the idea of embracing the cloud for business purposes might be seen by some as even more risky. However, the cloud can be something that is genuinely a secure choice for businesses. If your business doesn’t have the time to be on top of all the security issues that come along with being a small business owner, then using a good cloud service can be a really good idea.