The consequences of a data breach are nothing to joke about. From reputation damage to regulatory fines, it is a disaster for any business. So you should always strive to do your best to prevent it. But with so many steps to take, where do you even begin?
Businesses of all shapes and sizes should follow this 8-step approach:
1. Outline Your Assets
Your assets, whether digital or physical, should always remain in your sight. It should be the very first step you take.
Picture anything that might represent a risk and start from there. Include every laptop or smart device, not to mention your websites and servers. Only by marking all the pieces of the equation can you move forward to securing them.
2. Use Vulnerability and Compliance Management Tools
You could do things manually, but why not take advantage of the new vulnerability and compliance management tools? It takes you forward by helping you identify any gaps, weaknesses, and misconfigurations in your virtual environments. On top of that, it helps you monitor them as time goes on, thus pinpointing any potential problems as soon as they arise.
3. Set a Regular Auditing Schedule
As your business keeps changing, regular audits are necessary to ensure compliance. In fact, you should recheck everything upon starting to use a new system, migrating the content to a new CMS, and so on. The same goes if you’ve recently moved data to another database.
Ask yourself this: is your data encrypted and secure? When was the last time you’ve reviewed your security logs? How recent are your backups? It helps you determine the next action steps to take.
4. Invest in Your Staff’s Education
The human factor can be the Achilles’ heel of your cybersecurity plan. Thus, you should educate your staff on what the risks are and how to keep them to a minimum:
- Teach them how to use modern cybersecurity tools like NordVPN Teams to restrict access to business platforms for outsiders.
- Update your policies to reflect that and make sure your team stays informed.
- Leave no device unattended and assign access privileges on a per-need basis.
In the end, your employees should be knowledgeable enough to recognize a potential cybersecurity threat. Their first instinct should be to consult one of their superiors if they don’t know how to proceed when encountering it.
5. Control Computer Usage
Do your employees often visit peer-to-peer sharing websites and other forms of entertainment? If it isn’t necessary for the workflow of your business, it could introduce further cybersecurity risks. So inform your employees what is and isn’t permitted in the workplace.
Feel free to check the browsing history and system logs if need be. You should also have a firm grip on what software is running on your computers at any given time. Also, make sure employees can install only pre-approved software packages.
6. Schedule Regular Maintenance
The importance of regular updating is self-explanatory. It minimizes the window of system vulnerability if you install updates as soon as they’re released. Without any weaknesses insight, hackers have a much harder time barging their way in.
You may be worrying that updates and antivirus scans take away from productivity time and slow down the performance of your devices. Then consider scheduling them outside of your working hours. Another way to go about it is to update your devices one by one. That way, you get the job done without making significant sacrifices to your productivity and workflow.
7. Shred Your Files Before Disposal
Realize that there is a difference between deleting and shredding your files. The former enables files recovery with the right tools, whereas the latter method destroys them for good. By doing this, you’ll have no fear of sensitive company data getting into the wrong hands upon disposing of your old computers and hardware that you no longer use. While you’re at it, be sure to destroy all the other portable media in the process as well.
8. Keep Your Most Valuable Data Under Lock and Key
Encrypt the most valuable and sensitive data. As an extra security measure, keep it in a locked room that only the most trusted members of your organization can access. Whenever you’re about to bestow the permission upon anyone, do not do so hastily and conduct a background check instead. Above all, be careful what your third-party business partners and subcontractors can access.
The Bottom Line
Cybersecurity is a complicated topic, indeed. But these steps should be enough to get you started. Keep in mind that there are no foolproof ways to prevent a data breach from happening; it’s all about keeping the risk to a minimum.
