Your data is one of the most valuable and crucial business assets that you own. It’s your recipe for success, competitive advantage, and a metric of performance—all squeezed into one. Without accurate and timely availability of data, your company can’t take essential business decisions.

Here’s a lowdown on how you can keep your business data safe:

Encrypt your data

Data encryption is the process of encoding information. It translates your data into another code form only so that individuals with a secret key can access it.

Even though data encryption sounds like a fancy term, it really isn’t confined to the data geeks only. Literally, anyone can encrypt their emails. Even though mathematicians and science geeks long used the concept in the past, things have changed.

If you’re using the Apple mail program, you can use open-source plug-ins like GPG for Mail to help you decrypt, verify, and sign your emails. Similarly, programs like FileVault help you encrypt the hard drive.

A company’s data

Data backup

This is one of the most basic data protection tips. Back up involves creating duplicate copies of the data that remain stored even if the primary device gets lost, compromised, or stolen. Even though this is a very basic form of protection, as many as 68% of small businesses don’t really have a disaster recovery plan. Restoring lost data is a lot more costly and difficult compared to backing it up. The downtime associated with data restoring can cost you as much as $300,000 per hour!

Cloud backup

Besides taking other necessary steps to secure your data, moving to the cloud is also a great idea. One of the biggest benefits of moving to the cloud is that none of your data is stored on a local device. Your data isn’t going anywhere, even if the laptop gets stolen or compromised.

Besides, the cloud servers are located off-site and are professionally managed by third-party vendors—making them far safer than in-house servers. Even if a hurricane destroys your in-house servers, the copies of your data in the off-site servers will always be secure.

Cloud backup is also incredibly affordable since most businesses don’t have extensive IT budgets.

If you’re a small business that is new to the idea of data security, we recommend seeking help from a managed IT service. Foris LLC is your best option in Texas.