Data is at the heart of every organization. Keeping essential data like passwords, personal information, and financial records safe from external threats is one of the top priorities for businesses that want to gain customers’ trust.
That’s why there are laws implemented that require businesses to safeguard the personal data they collect and hold.
Data Protection:
Data protection refers to the steps taken by an organization to protect vital data from loss, corruption, and theft.
Organizations and businesses collect a vast amount of personal data from customers, including names, addresses, healthcare records, criminal records, cultural profiles, web-surfing behavior, financial, political, educational information, media viewing habits, geographics, psychographics, and more.
Why Should Data Be Protected?
A data breach is when sensitive or private information falls into unauthorized people’s hands and is misused. In 2017, the Identity Theft Resource Center reported more than 1,500 public data breaches.
Using strong data protection helps you comply with the law, but it also enables you to use private data for business needs.
Data protection should be done to ensure data privacy, protect it from theft and loss, and ensure that the organization can safely use the data to conduct business.
How To Protect Data:
With advancements in technology, scams and privacy threats have also increased. The last thing you want your customers to worry about is what you’ll do with their data.
Data protection assures your customers that you can be trusted to handle their data carefully, and without any problems. Companies can take the following steps to protect their data:
Understand The Data:
Companies need to be aware of the personal data they collect and what information is extra-sensitive.
They need to understand how to store it properly and the safety measures to be taken to protect it.
Follow Data Protection Standards:
ISO 27001 is one of the best-known standards for data security, created by the International Organization of Standardization, a non-governmental organization from Switzerland.
You can also research the different data security practices and laws your country and industry follow and find out ways to implement them in your organization.
Teach Your Employees About Data Protection:
Employees need to understand the importance of protecting data, your organization’s data protection policies, and how they can work to implement them.
Monitor Data Activity On Mobile Devices:
Ensure that your employees know how to use mobile phones, laptops, and other devices outside the office when handling company data and correctly follow the data protection guidelines.
Make Sure Your Business Partners Follow Data Protection Practices:
Check with third-party vendors, contractors, suppliers, and other partner organizations you share data with to see if they follow the outlined data protection policies as well as you do.
New data security laws such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation can hold your company responsible for any data protection failures on your partners’ part.
Update Company Software:
Outdated software is likely to have vulnerabilities that hackers and cybercriminals can exploit easily and access your data. Security experts keep recommending that companies assess and fix these vulnerabilities to protect their systems from attacks.
Using the latest software version allows you to get rid of vulnerabilities the system may have through a software update.
Foris IT Management provides data backup and disaster recovery solutions in Texas. Whether you want to assess your company’s network or want a complete network security audit, we can do it for you. Get in touch to book our services today.
Leave A Comment