[BreachExchange] Secure Your Business Data, And Ensure Your Business Is Safer

[Audrey McNeil]

http://foundersguide.com/secure-your-business-data-and-
ensure-your-business-is-safer/

There are so many things to think about when running a business. How to
continue profiting, or increase profit; how to market your products and
service effectively; how to reel in new customers; how to reel in the best
employees. Of course, these are only the considerations you have concerning
the success of your empire. There’s also much to consider when it comes to
keeping your company safe and secure.

Your business is a fragile entity. Whilst you might have plans in place for
changes in the market, failed service, lawsuits or problems with a product
on offer, damage to the core of a company can be harder to remedy. Once
your precious data and information is damaged or leaked, your business
becomes a target, and all its hard work becomes scattered to the wind. If
you want to avoid this ever happening, here are some pieces of guidance
that might help you avoid such an eventuality.

Defend against hackers.

In this modern age, everything is accessible everywhere. That makes things
much easier for you as a business, but it also makes things much easier for
a criminal looking to steal important information or simply cause
destruction on a mass scale. Cyber crime is a growing area, and there are
always people looking to sell your precious data on to the highest bidder.
You should aim to shut down such threats before they are even threats.

Some smaller-scale attempts at accessing your business’ vulnerabilities
might come in the form of an unsuspecting email, so you should practice
safety techniques in sifting out potentially dangerous spam mail. You could
consider services in event stream processing to ensure that you’re notified
of threats as soon as they emerge, but there’s a lot you need to do before
that ever happens. Encrypt certain details, delete information when it’s no
longer needed, but still potentially damaging to the company or its
customer-base, and change passwords frequently. Sometimes threats slip past
the first line of defense, so it’s important to have backup security
measures.

Educate your employees.

This is where so many businesses go wrong. The IT staff might understand
the importance of secure data and implement numerous measures to safeguard
your company’s sensitive information, but that doesn’t mean everyone else
in the business understands how to keep the company’s information safe. If
you want to ensure that no employee accidentally and innocently opens an
alarming spam email, warning them to open the link immediately, then you
need to educate them in the difference between spam email and real email.

At the end of the day, anyone within your corporation could be targeted,
and they probably will be. Ensure nobody is a weak link in the chain,
because, once exploited, there’s no closing Pandora’s Box. Don’t let your
company get infiltrated through avoidable means.

Share only what you need to share.

A business shouldn’t only think about “defense” when it comes to security.
Hackers are only one form of the problem. In an ever-connected world, the
internet opens up a whole new can of worms when it comes to over-sharing
information and putting your business’ security at risk. Ensure that
confidential information isn’t shared on social media by unaware employees;
make a policy clearly detailing the data which should be public knowledge
and the data which should not.
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