You’ve worked hard building your business from the ground up, which is why it’s stressful to know that hackers and other cyber threats lurk on every corner. Data breaches are incredibly costly for companies to deal with, so you want to invest time in ensuring that you’re protecting business and consumer data.
It’s vital that you arm yourself with the right tools to avoid hacking, theft, or data loss. By keeping your company’s data secure, you protect your company’s reputation and reduce the financial burden of dealing with a data breach aftermath.
Properly safeguard physical documents
In today’s digital world, we sometimes spend so much time worrying over firewalls and SSL certificates that we forget about the paper element. You and your employees should treat sensitive paper documents with the same level of attention as you treat your online transactions.
Depending on the type of business data you deal with, and how much you need to safeguard it, you might consider shredding any documents that contain sensitive data after you have handled them. If the record has served its purpose in your office, keeping it around might be an unnecessary security risk.
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Follow data security best practices when sending mail
Another excellent way to keep your data secure is by ensuring you follow best practices when sending out mail. One specific measure you can take today is to ensure that every document you send out is completely covered when you put it inside an envelope and that your envelopes are opaque when held up to the light.
This measure will reduce the likelihood you accidentally send out sensitive information or that an intermediary compromises your mail. Another link in the security chain is the printing process. How has access to your printers, and do they store document information after printing? If so, take measures to protect your data from prying eyes. If you outsource printing to another company, it could make you vulnerable, so shop smart.
If you’re looking to circumvent the security risks of a traditional mail reception, consider investing in a virtual office like from iPostal1. Virtual offices included a professionally-staffed, secure mail reception center, as well as fax and phone services. You can manage your business correspondence from anywhere in the world with the click of a button, and you’ll never have to worry about thieves or porch pirates compromising your business transactions.
Make password security a priority
One of the most common types of security breaches results from a lack of password security. If you have employees, you should make sure you educate them on best practices for password security. Specifically, you should inform employees not to share passwords with others, and you should have a policy in place that requires them to update their passwords every few months. This training is an easy way you can help bolster your company’s data security.
Besides educating your employees and enforcing policies, you want to ensure you have strong passwords so they are not easily hacked into or guessed by someone who would like to steal your company’s data. Strong passwords usually contain a number, a symbol, and a mixture of upper- and lowercase letters.
Ensure you encrypt your data
If you are not going to encrypt your data, you risk someone accessing it during a breach. Any time you are dealing with sensitive data, you need to encrypt it. Encryption ensures that even if your data is exposed, it will be unreadable to hackers.
You might consider buying an encrypted external hard drive, and you should make sure your employees use strong encryption keys when they store their passwords on the company’s network. Encryption is one of the easiest and most effective ways to secure your data, so you will want to take advantage of it as much as possible.
Keep employees educated on best security practices
Even if you do your best to ensure you follow all the proper security practices, you want to inform your employees of their role in keeping data secure. Many data breaches are entirely avoidable with a bit of extra training and emphasis on vigilance.
A company is only as good as its worst employee’s training. By incorporating security best practices into your onboarding modules, you build a culture of trust from the ground upwards.
Wrap up
Only you can keep your company’s data secure. By following the strategies above, you can rest easy knowing that your business data is safe and sound.