A Must-Read Guide to Protecting Your Brand’s Data

A company’s data is its biggest asset. Traffic sources, customer information, social media secrets, and an email subscriber list are valuable to an organization, as they can each determine a brand’s growth.

Yet, many organizations make the mistake of failing to safeguard their sensitive information, which can increase the risk of a data breach. If you are guilty of doing so, here is a must-read guide to protecting your brand’s data.

An Encrypted Customer Database

It doesn’t matter whether you run a small or large organization; you still have a legal and moral duty to protect your customers’ information. If you don’t, a data breach could cause significant harm to your customers and irreparable damage to your reputation and finances. To prevent this from happening, you must store customer data in an encrypted database.

Anti-Virus and Malware Protection

Every business is vulnerable to viruses and malware, which can infiltrate a network, accounts, and files. If you fail to protect your business from various cyber threats, you could fall victim to hacking. This is something your brand may struggle to recover from. Keep your network, website, platforms, and data safe by installing anti-virus and malware programs. Additionally, ensure you keep them updated to combat new threats.

Backup Your Files and Websites Daily

Intelligent cybercriminals will adopt new tactics to penetrate the most secure websites and systems. For this reason, you must routinely backup your files and websites. This can help you make a speedy recovery from a cyber-attack, such as ransomware. Also, ensure you store the backups offsite, which can help you restore your site should your hosting provider become compromised.

Protect Your Communications

There are many areas that a business must protect, and that includes their instant messages. As your team is likely to share sensitive information on a web project, discuss ideas for an upcoming social media campaign, or share business-critical files, you must prevent the data from falling into the wrong hands. For this reason, you should consider introducing an open source messaging platform that offers core access control, nature eDiscovery compliance support, data loss prevention, private cloud deployment, and much more.

Educate Your Employees on Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity training can prevent your business from falling victim to a cyberattack. For example, a malware infection, phishing scam, or botnet attack. Therefore, you must inform them of the importance of strong passwords across websites, platforms, business accounts, and devices. Plus, they must become familiar with different hacking tactics. This ensures they understand the dangers of using an unsecured network when accessing a business account.

Perform Background Checks

Protecting your brand’s data is difficult. In fact, the best security systems might not be enough, as your employees could be the biggest threat to your business. To prevent a staff member from handing over your trade secrets to a competitor or stealing customer data, you must perform background checks on every employee who will gain access to internal data. You can then enjoy peace of mind that you have hired honest, trustworthy staff. Background checks will also prove you take data security seriously.