6 Steps to Keep Your Company Secure and Prevent Data Breach

Learn how to safeguard your company from hackers and how to prevent bad actors from causing damage if they gain access to your network.

Your business handles sensitive data, as do all businesses. Keeping your data secure is a primary priority, whether it’s your customer’s personal information, your company’s financial records and accounts, or that new top-secret project you don’t want to leak just yet. Regrettably, it appears to be getting more difficult all the time. As a result, data breaches are becoming more common, but small business owners are often unaware of how to prevent them or what to do if one occurs.

IT security personnel are expected to accomplish more with less in order to improve the security of their organization. They must keep up with day-to-day IT and security operations, recruit and retain qualified security personnel, identify and close security capability gaps, and get the most out of their security technologies.

There are various reasons of security breaches, and firms can typically avoid them by adopting some simple data breach prevention measures.

A data breach’s consequences:

A data breach‘s ramifications are as diverse as the types of breaches themselves. It could be as simple as one employee finding out what his colleagues are paid and threatening to sue for more. It could also be more serious, such as cyber thieves gaining access to your files and encrypting them for a ransom.

Accessing client data, such as names, addresses, social security numbers, and credit card numbers, is common in the types of data breaches that have recently made headlines. Victim companies may face millions of dollars in legal fees and lost business as a result of these breaches.

Detecting, identifying, and recovering from a data breach may be a lengthy and time-consuming process for a company. While the implications of a data breach might be devastating for a huge firm, they can be fatal for a tiny company. The best bet is to be ready for it and avoid it from happening in the first place.

There are 6 measures to keep your data protected

While there is no foolproof way to prevent all data breaches, following these Six actions can help your company avoid catastrophic disclosures.

 1 – Create and Test a Comprehensive Strategy

It is critical to have a strategic vision for your security strategy and to have a complete plan to achieve that aim. IT security teams frequently react to incidents rather than developing a proactive plan that matches organizational risk tolerance thresholds.

Then, ensure that you have sufficient resources to implement that entire strategy. Because no business is completely safe, secure, or protected, chief information security officers (CISOs) must be as strategic as feasible.

Most businesses have developed and implemented multifaceted security plans. They do not, however, have the skills in-house to assess whether their technique is helpful in stopping attacks.

To ensure the effectiveness of corporate security policies and procedures, many audit standards require firms to conduct frequent penetration testing of their IT infrastructure. But keep in mind that being cooperative does not imply that you are safe from your data breach. .

2 – Get a Better View of Your IT Environment

With today’s sophisticated cyber threats. Having a thorough and consistent framework for identifying, monitoring, controlling, and defending your network is critical. Because it takes an average of months for a corporation to notice an incident. Cybersecurity now necessitates a more comprehensive approach.

Better network visibility and intelligence are required to safeguard your organization from security threats. In a constantly changing environment, it is critical to be aware of what’s going on every day so you can see problems early and prevent them from spreading.

Using intrusion detection and prevention systems is one option (IDPS). If properly configured, these systems lessen the chance of a security breach.

3- Always be a step ahead of the hackers

Continuously discovering, assessing, and remediating security risks and threats throughout your IT environment is the foundation of a good security posture. You should prioritize and respond to your security threats. A risk is something you don’t do, and a threat is something that can take advantage of that risk.

It’s no longer a question of if you’ll be breached, but when and how severely. Develop a Vulnerability Management program to protect your firm from today’s ever-changing security dangers and threats.

You can be compliant without being secure. Compliance requirements are frequently static, but security models today are usually dynamic. The rapid pace at which technology and cybercrime evolve makes it challenging to present legislation to foster security best practices.

4- Improve your productivity by working smarter and faster.

CISOs may speed up detection and response with advanced. Next-generation cybersecurity solutions like cloud-native security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR). Which are led by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). As cybersecurity procedures grow and hackers’ attack tactics evolve, it’s critical to work smarter.

Because threats are growing at a faster rate, security teams need to be able to react quickly and correctly around the clock. Intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence are provided by cloud-based SIEMs, allowing security teams to work smarter and quicker. Smarter and more advanced cybersecurity solutions are one method to overcome a lack of resources.

5- The use of encryption

Today’s technology allows you to encrypt your data in a variety of ways. Make use of them. Don’t simply encrypt data in files; encrypt files in transit via email and other ways as well.

6- Educate your workforce

An honest employee error is one of the most typical ways data breaches occur. You must train your staff on how to develop strong passwords and how to spot phishing scams and other security concerns.

Employees should be trained, tested, and educated on the necessity of information security. It can be difficult to persuade your employees to participate in cyber security training, but it is necessary.

From a single cyber-attack on a company, cybercriminals can make thousands, if not millions, of dollars. It’s more critical than ever to defend your firm against hackers who are growing more clever and targeted.

Stay one step ahead of the game if you want to avoid becoming a victim of the next big data breach. Businesses that become complacent about their cyber security become exposed to assault.