Ensuring the safety of your critical data

Cybercrimes are on the rise, and the risk of a data breach is a serious issue that should never be underestimated. Losing some of the information, you stored (or all of it) may have a tremendously negative impact on your business.

Even a simple slow down as you try to recover what you’ve lost may cause an irreparable breach of trust with your clients.

Here are some useful tips for preserving your data or, at least, minimise the damage whenever a data loss occurs.

Always backup your data

Although this may sound like a very simple piece of advice, the importance of backing up your data can never be stressed enough. I know it is annoying, I know it takes time, but, seriously, you must do it.

Today there a lot of easier and simpler methods to smooth out this process and back up everything within a few minutes. If you have a website, there are a lot of plugins available to save your data with automated options. If you need to preserve physical data, an external hard drive lets you store it safely. But if you don’t want to back up everything, you can still save just the most critical files or folders inside a USB flash drive.

Keep your backups in a safe location

Even if you employed all the best, safest methods to ensure your data security, an accident like a fire or an electrical short circuit could possibly occur, causing you to lose everything.
Keep your backups off-site in a safe spot to be sure that your data will always be available no matter what. Move the most important files in a laptop that you keep in your house, for example, or if your business facilities are located in a town where there is an elevated risk for earthquakes, keep your backups in a different city.

Use a secure messaging system

Many work-related communications occur on free consumer-grade chat apps that, unsurprisingly enough, expose you and your employees to serious security and privacy risks. If a conversation is leaked, a data breach may cost you a lot of money.

For example, if you run a hospital or clinic, you must ensure that your patient’s privacy is secured at all times, and to do so, you must employ a HIPAA compliant messaging system or be fined with up to $50,000. If a data breach occurs during a communication, you can be held responsible for any collateral damage, and even be sued for that!

Spending some money to purchase an instant messenger for business is a great idea, especially if you want to protect your workplace communication at all levels. These tools provide you with several layers of security, such as P2P channels to guarantee that all communications occur between authorized users only and integration with anti-virus and anti-malware software to protect data transfers.

Make sure important data is adequately encrypted

Data encryption is a great way to ensure that nobody can access your vital information when a security breach occurs. By preventing unauthorised users from gaining access to your encrypted data, you’re minimizing exposure and, at the same time, provide an additional reason for your clients to trust you with their sensitive information.

Don’t forget to keep your encryption keys in a safe place, though, especially if you’re using a cloud-based solution.

Save your data in cloud storage

Regardless of whether they’re USB flashes, external or traditional ones, hard drives are still physical objects made of metal and plastic. Because of that, they may break down and stop working for a lot of reasons.

However, if you upload it to the cloud, you do not risk losing it anymore because of a device failure. There are still some downsides to this choice, of course, such as the capacity limitation of many cloud storage services, or the necessity of a stable internet connection.

On the other hand, though, you also get many useful benefits, such as the improved accessibility from any internet-connected device.

Network Attached Storage (NAS)

Network-attached storages (NASes) are small devices that work as servers in a local area network (LAN). They’re used as storage units that can be linked directly to a network, so you don’t need to physically connect a new device every time you want to back up your data.

More advanced NAS devices also have a server mode to act as a database, print and email server and they’re a popular solution for disaster recovery and to provide redundancy. Their main downside is that they may be somewhat expensive to purchase and maintain.

Think of cybersecurity insurance as a necessary evil

State-sponsored cyberattacks are constantly rising, as well as the largely unknown vulnerabilities of the Internet of Things (IoT). Sometimes, no matter how much you did invest in your cybersecurity, you may still become a target of a massive attack that will find a way through your firewall.

One way or the other, if you think about security breaches as an unavoidable risk, cybersecurity insurance becomes a necessary evil. Although its premiums may seem expensive, if something bad happens, you will be more than happy to have paid them. Some insurance companies also provide additional tools or recommendations to help secure your infrastructure and prevent damage.

Conclusion

There are many different ways to protect and save your data from unnecessary risks. Newer devices and software, as well as smarter solutions, are developed every day. You just need to look out for the method that better suits your needs. Although these solutions may look costly, think about how much more costly a full data loss would be.

Bottom line, just keep in mind that’s always better to be safe rather than sorry!