Data is crucial to any company. It allows it to operate efficiently and profitably. Companies must balance the need to collect a lot of data, while also having the responsibility to safeguard and secure customer information. The GDPR in Europe and California’s CCPA are a major factor in this along with long-standing law like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and Securities and Exchange Commission rules that protect financial data of shareholders and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.
The first step to ensure data protection is to catalog and secure all your data. This includes identifying, classifying and determining access levels for data according to its sensitiveness. It is important to implement policies that safeguard data regardless of whether it is in transit or in a state of rest. Utilizing a solution to monitor and detect activities in the file and detect suspicious patterns can help you recognize suspicious activity, and swiftly identify and reduce vulnerabilities that could be a result of outdated or incompatible software.
A complete plan for recovery and backup that includes physical storage media is vital. Lastly, it’s important to implement appropriate security measures including background checks for potential hires and periodic training for employees who are already employed to firing employees who do not require access to critical systems. It is also essential to develop a disaster recovery plan to ensure that your data is secured in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.