Data breaches within your business can be catastrophic and devastate a brand. It’s so hard for an average person to contemplate just how bad they can be – but once you start factoring in the fact that the average cost of a data breach worldwide is around four million dollars, but in America, it is closer to nine million dollars worth.
America is a priority target for hackers and phishers – largely because it is home to some of the planet’s biggest brands. A data breach or leak is a generic term that refers to a broad range of varying incidents involving sensitive business data.
Data is big business these days – which is why cyber-attacks are always on the rise. Use the below four fantastic strategies to prevent a leak within your company.
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Risk Evaluation
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a data breach occurs when secure or confidential information gets moved into an untrusted environment. Breaches and leaks can be small or large, and sometimes they are so big that they can’t get kept under wraps, and they end up all over the media.
Once you understand what business data is valuable, you can task your I.T team with protecting that information at all costs. Not only is data protection law, but it is also a drawcard for wealthy customers. If they are not confident that their data is safe with your company, they will go elsewhere.
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Data Loss Prevention Software
Data leaks and data breaches are two different things. A leak generally occurs by accident and a data breach is typically the outcome of a well-planned cyber-attack.
The resulting loss of data can be devastating to a product or service-based business. Data loss prevention (DLP) is a data protection strategy that includes data leak prevention as one of its core elements. An effective system here will combine technology with modern processes to keep data secure and not exposed to anyone who isn’t authorized to access it.
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Encrypt Your Data
It’s 2022, if your company’s sensitive data isn’t encrypted then you have more problems than you realize. Hackers and cybercriminals find encrypted data harder to exploit. There are two main categories of data encryption that your I.T teams should be well aware of.
As much as having your company’s data encrypted will protect it from amateur hackers, advanced cyber criminals use malicious software to do their dirty work. That is why data encryption, as vital as it is, should never be your sole method for protecting your business’s sensitive data.
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Monitor and Reporting Requirements
Your company’s confidential data could get accessed at any time, and you wouldn’t know about it unless you monitored its access logs regularly. Instead of setting this up as a manual task, use reliable software systems to alert you of all unauthorized activities.
Most of these software programs include a section for compiling reports – that is the only way you can accurately decide whether or not your cyber safety strategies are working. You must stay on your toes in today’s tech environment – it is a dog-eat-dog world out there. You must do everything possible to protect your company and its sensitive information.