Data leaks are not only embarrassing to your business, but they can also prove to be very costly. Regardless of whether you use the right protocols to safeguard your business or not, data leaks can happen at any time.
As a business owner, it’s important to bear in mind that these data leaks can happen externally or from within. In this technological era where information can travel across the world in a few seconds, it’s important to keep your business data as safe as possible.
This is because one mistake, whether accidental or intentional, could end up ruining any modern business. Nowadays, there are many ways you can use to prevent your business data from leaking and reaching the wrong audience.
They include:
1.Access security permissions
It’s highly unlikely for anyone to leak any data they don’t have access to in the first place. For this reason, a policy of least privilege is needed in any business setting. Unfortunately, many businesses out there tend to give their employees access to a lot more data than is needed.
When you’re in business, it’s important to take the zero-trust approach with the crucial data. You need to ensure that all your employees only gain access to the data they require to perform their job functions.
With this policy, you’ll be minimizing any risk of your workers leaking the business data intentionally. With the right system in place, you’ll even get real-time alerts when any of your employees try to access any restricted documents.
2. Provide cybersecurity training to your employees
One of the important decisions you can make as a business owner is to ensure that your employees receive the necessary training in all cybersecurity activities.
Such training will help inform your employees about the main cybersecurity risks, their impact on the business, and how to combat them. As a business owner, you should never assume that your employees know the confidential data and which one isn’t.
Carrying out regular cybersecurity training sessions will help keep your employees updated on the company policies about data leakage and its dangers. With this training, your employees are bound to develop some accountability and help them stop making some basic mistakes that might put your business data at risk.
As part of comprehensive cybersecurity training for your employees, it is crucial to emphasize their familiarity with data regulation laws as well. Staying informed about regulatory frameworks such as the Digital Markets Act can help businesses navigate legal landscapes and enhance data protection. Digital Markets Act summary encompasses the various methods through which gatekeepers may utilize your data. Educating your team about data protection laws will empower them to contribute effectively to the organization's overall cybersecurity efforts.
3. Data endpoint security
Data endpoints refer to the machines that your employees use at the workplace. It could be desktops, tablets, or laptops. Since it’s on these devices that important business data passes through and sometimes is stored, it’s important to protect them.
As a business owner, you should ensure that you employ data endpoint solutions that will help you track everything about these machines.
You’ll get to know when these machines were used, what they were used for, and who used them. These solutions should also include passwords that restrict data access by your employees.
4. Utilize encryption protocols
If at this point, your business has not adopted encryption protocols, you should consider it. While this measure isn’t entirely secure, it ensures that all the sensitive, private and confidential data is protected and beyond reach.
Any business data that might end up leaking to the wrong audience is rendered unreadable and useless with encryption. Some encryption solutions will provide the needed protection to your data, whether in transit or stored. Any business with a multilayered data defense system is less vulnerable to any data breaches and data leaks.
5. Document shredding
Nowadays, the increase in digital data breaches has left many business managements looking up and down for the latest and most advanced solutions to such threats.
While digitizing your business is important to its operations and overall success, hard-copy documents still play a big role in most businesses. Unfortunately, most businesses seem to have forgotten that a digital data leak is just as damaging as losing a paper document.
While some of the digital solutions to prevent data leaks are not that effective, there are other ways you can protect your business from any costly data leaks. For example, document shredding is one of the ways you can enhance your business’s data security. That way, you can choose the best way you’d want to destroy your business data completely and without a trace now or in the future.
6. Email content control
Most businesses and marketers have learned how to make money with an email list, and they won’t rest until they actualize it. However, content filtering when sending any emails to these lists is very important.
With content filtering, your business can conduct a thorough inspection of any potential threats posed by emails received. However, since most businesses rely on emails to group their clients when sending out broadcasts, this can result in a serious data leak.
Fortunately, nowadays, with the help of Google Drive, you can set some screen confirmation warning to ensure that you only share files with the right audience.
With this setting, your computer system will always receive real-time alerts whenever you’re about to send any data to someone outside the intended group or organization.
7. Device control
At most workplaces, it is expected that employees will carry with them personal devices such as smartphones, laptops, USB drivers, among other devices. However, these devices can be used by the same employees to take away confidential business data with ease.
For this reason, it’s important to come up with measures to control this. You can either restrict the usage of these devices at the workplace or burn such devices altogether.
You can also use other policies that will govern screen timeouts and downloads to curb data transmission. Without these measures in place, your business will always be at risk of data loss or leakage.
8. Control print
Another aspect that most businesses neglect and never regulate is the usage of printers at the workplace. To prevent data leakage, you should ensure that your employees use printers that require them to sign in.
This will ensure that access to workplace printers is regulated. With this measure, the cases of important documents being left on top of printers will be seized.
If you want to protect your business from any serious harm both internally and externally, ensure you prioritize preventing data leaks. While putting these measures in place might take time and resources, your business is bound to rip big rewards in the long run.
