Businesses rely heavily on their data, especially after the technological advances in the past few years. The amount of data that businesses handle daily is huge.
That’s why any business or entrepreneur needs to make their data secure to protect it from cyberattacks. Any breach of data can cost a business a huge amount of money and cause it to lose its customers. On the other hand, optimizing your data to increase efficiency and save time on data-related tasks is important.
If you are searching for ways to protect and optimize your data, here are a few tips from the pros.
Encrypt Your Data When Stored Or Transferred
Encryption is your first line of defense against attacks from hackers. By using encryption tools, you ensure that your stored and shared data is confidential and unaltered. Encryption allows people with the proper access to read the data while preventing intruders from accessing it, and even if accessed, from understanding it.
While sharing encrypted data, you are confident that the data won’t be changed in any way, and it will reach the other end in one piece. Additionally, you guarantee compliance with regulations or industry-related standards when you use an encryption tool for your data. There are numerous encryption tools in the market.
Ensure you compare their features and prices (some tools are free) to get the right one for you.
Secure Mobile Devices
After the COVID-19 pandemic, companies allowed their employees to work remotely. Some businesses depend on employees to work out of the office.
Both kinds of employees use mobile devices to do their job, but according to the data pros at dbvisit.com, mobile devices are prone to cyberattacks that might compromise the company’s data.
There are several security measures that must be put in place if your employees use mobile devices such as smartphones or laptops for work:
- Employees must use strong passwords.
- Having the ability to wipe and lock devices remotely if they are lost or stolen.
- Monitoring emails to ensure that there is no malware or unauthorized data shared.
- Updating the devices’ operating systems and applications.
- Installing mobile security software.
Since human error is the cause of most security breaches, you should also train your employees to recognize phishing scams. You should also be aware of the 9 signs your Android was hacked by malicious actors, so you and your employees can report the problem when it occurs.
Make A Balance Between New And Existing Technology
With the rapid technological advances, some businesses tend to buy the newest technology solutions available. Other businesses are wary or not sure about new technology, so they stick with what they have.
Updating your technology solutions such as software or hardware can continually put your data at risk and make handling it difficult. Keeping your existing technology solutions for a long time will make them outdated, and they won’t handle your data as efficiently as before.
Businesses should find the balance between new and existing technology by finding new tools that will work seamlessly with your data without changing anything radically making sure your data is stored in a data warehouse.
Hire A Data Management Team
The technology you use to handle your data is as important as the team that manages it. You have two options, either hire an in-house data management staff or outsource this task to a specialized company.
In both cases, you need highly-trained and experienced employees in data management to be able to manage data collection, ensure data quality, protect your data, and be efficient in data analysis, implementation. Also you need to be ready in case of needing a it disaster recovery solution.
This team will ensure that you can get insightful results from your data that can be analyzed for strategic decisions. Moreover, the team will ensure that your data is protected against any threats.
Back-Up Your Data To A Secure Offsite Location
There are several threats that can compromise your data’s integrity or even availability. Simple ransomware will keep your data hostage until you pay, and even then, it will still be under threat. Natural disasters can cause damage to hardware and prevent you from accessing sensitive data.
That’s why it is essential to create a backup of your data in an offsite location in such cases. Typically, you must implement security measures to ensure that backup data won’t be compromised. Give access to selected personnel for the backup data as it is a vital element of IT disaster recovery.
Protecting your data should be a priority as it protects you from internal and external threats that can cost you a huge amount of money.
Optimizing your data will help you make better decisions for your business in the long run while making handling your data easier for your employees.
Encryption is one of the most efficient tools against cyberattacks and unauthorized access attempts. Secure mobile devices that your employees use and backup your data to ensure that it will stay safe and secured.
Hiring a team for data management will optimize your data while integrating new technology solutions with your data will ensure that the data can be handled easily.
