In fact, government cyber threat intelligence shows almost half of all businesses report having cyber security breaches. A single attack can lead to mass data loss and exposure of sensitive data, causing unnecessary downtime and putting the trust of your customers at risk.
To help you protect your company from disaster and data leaks, we’ll use this blog to demonstrate how most organisations lose their data in the first place, and how you can prevent data loss altogether with some simple data security tips.
But before we get to that, what does data loss mean?
Data loss is when information systems are corrupted, deleted, or unrecoverable.
Data loss is very different from data unavailability, which is primarily caused by power outages and from a data breach – which refers to data being stolen.
However, data loss is often used interchangeably with a data breach, since cybercriminals don’t always give your information back, or corrupt it in the hacking process.
And if you experience a power surge – creating temporary data unavailability – while you were in the middle of transferring files, you may find them corrupted or unreadable as a result, which would also constitute data loss.
If you want to prevent data loss and protect your data at all costs, you need to know all the ways it can occur so you can keep your data secure. The list below covers off some of the most common ways:
Now that you know how much danger your computer faces every day, let’s take a look at how to prevent data loss.
One of the biggest defences in data loss prevention is data backups. This is especially true for ransomware. Create a data backup strategy that can protect your business by helping to recover or restore your data that has been corrupted or lost and make sure you have good backups and offline backups as well.
Once you’ve outlined a backup and recovery strategy be sure to backup on a regular basis and test your backup solution to ensure it works effectively. That way if disaster strikes, you can be safe in the knowledge your entire system and the stored data you hold is protected.
Here a few tips about data backup that’ll help you do it effectively:
Backing up data isn’t enough; you must also outline a detailed disaster recovery (DR) plan. A DR plan will enable everyone in your business to understand exactly what they need to do when disaster strikes helping minimise data loss and helping to secure data quickly.
Our guide will help you to create your very own disaster recovery plan, click here to read.
Power surges and power outages can wreak havoc on your systems and to prevent data loss, you’re going to need an uninterruptible power supply.
A good power supply will provide near-instantaneous emergency power if the main supply cuts out so you can save your documents and shut down your computer properly without damaging the hardware or corrupting any of your important files.
Choosing a firewall and antivirus solution is one of the most sensible precautions you can take when protecting your company’s sensitive data.
Viruses and malware can infiltrate hard drives and networks, stealing all forms of sensitive information, leading to even greater data breaches. The personally identifiable information of your employees and customers could be lost as well as corporate data and other confidential information.
Your firewall and antivirus software must be designed to handle the size, scope and security requirements of your organisation and should be continuously updated and properly maintained for the most significant protection.
Patching should be a crucial element of any business’s data loss prevention strategy. Cyber criminals lookout for security vulnerabilities and exploit them to infect your computers or modify your data, leak sensitive information and damage your integrity.
Keeping software updated also helps protect your data from unauthorised users or attackers by fixing security vulnerabilities present in the software.
Preventing data loss also means limiting employee access to specific kinds of data on your network.
You can set access levels, create policies that restrict the usage of company data and have employees sign a security agreement when they’re hired to help prevent data leaks.
Data loss prevention solutions from OfficeTechHub offer advanced data security and protection, making your business less vulnerable to attacks.
We offer straight-talking security solutions, chosen by our tech-savvy team to suit your business and its goals. So, you can avoid data breaches and prevent sensitive information from being lost.
As part of our data loss prevention services, we build all IT infrastructure with multiple layers of security and are trusted by some of the biggest names in IT to deliver smart, workable solutions that keep you protected at all times.
If you’d like more information about OfficeTechHub’s range of data loss prevention tools and our intrusion prevention systems, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Together we can keep your data secure.