Business Data Security Mistakes That You Don’t Want to Make
A data security breach may be all it takes for a small business to shut down, unlike large businesses that can weasel their way out of bankruptcy in such a situation. Avoiding data security breach is a matter of learning from mistakes that have been made. Here are some common ones that you should try to avoid.
Personal email and device use
Do you regulate the use of employee personal email address for work purposes? Well, you should, if you handle sensitive customer information in your line of business as a data beach can result in a fine or even worse consequences. Personal email addresses are vulnerable to cyber attacks, and an employer should strictly monitor the use of personal email ids and personal devices for work.
Weak encryption
Encryption is the key to keeping your data secure. Then again, it is important to take note of who has access to these keys. Ideally, you should have control over the encryption keys , rather than the provider. Also, you should know that a weak encryption is as good as no encryption. You want to make sure that the encryption standard of the cloud service provider meets the benchmark, and they have proof to validate it.
Encryption is equally important in your in-house non-cloud data. You can have multiple levels of encryption, so even if some of your systems or hard disks do get corrupt, the data remains safe.
Cloud SLA
Cloud technology has changed how businesses operate for the better- allowing for seamless collaboration of the workforce across the globe. One glaring issue that most businesses tend to brush aside is the question of security. How do you know for sure that your data is secure on the cloud? Well, this is where your service level agreement with the cloud provider comes into picture. You want to read the fine print in the SLA to understand how the cloud service provider is handling the data. Chances are that your service provider stores the data in a different country geographically, and if that is the case, you need to be mindful of the fact that the rules and regulations that are applicable to the data are different too.
The bottom line is to make sure that there are no loopholes in the fine print, and that the service provider honors compliance, and says the same on paper.