Data security is the act of protecting essential digital information from unauthorized access or attack. How do you keep your enterprise data safe and secure? There are a number of best practices you should follow.
Why Enterprise Data Security is Important
Your company is a data-driven enterprise. You rely on data of all types to plan your business’ future and run its day-to-day operations. If that data is threatened, it could affect your entire organization – which is why it’s imperative to protect all your data from breach or attack.
What kinds of data threats does your enterprise face? According to Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report, enterprise data breaches last year were the result of the following causes:
- Hacking (45%)
- Social attacks (22%)
- Employee error (22%)
- Malware (17%)
- Misuse by authorized users (8%)
- Physical actions (4%)
According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million. That number includes ransomware payments, detection and recovery costs, the cost of business disruption from system downtime, lost customers (and acquiring new ones), and the loss of reputation and goodwill.
Best Practices for Enterprise Data Security
To protect your data from these and other cyberthreats you need to employ strong data security. Here are some of the most important steps you can take.
Perform a Data Security Audit
Before you strategize how to protect your data, you need to identify what data you need to protect and why. Determine what types of data your organization collects, how it is collected and stored, and who has access to that data.
You should also evaluate your current cybersecurity systems and research the types of cyberthreats your organization is likely to encounter. All this information will help inform the security procedures you need to implement.
Encrypt All Important Data and Communications
If a cybercriminal breaches your systems, you don’t want them to be able to use any of the data they may find. To make your data unusable to unauthorized users, it needs to be encrypted.
Encryption essentially scrambles your data until it is unscrambled with the proper decryption key. Unfortunately, of companies surveyed, only 50% say they have an overall enterprise encryption policy, so there’s definitely room for improvement here.
You should encrypt not only the data you store but also all communications within your company. Malicious actors can intercept voice, video, and text communications and gain access to sensitive information – or use those communications to access other systems and data. The most secure communications platforms, such as Wickr, employ end-to-end encryption to ensure communications are protected from start to finish.
Back Up All Essential Data
Some cyberattacks, including ransomware attacks, can destroy valuable data in your systems. To mitigate against this type of damage, make sure you back up all essential data on a regular basis. It’s recommended to create several backups, including at least one cloud backup, so you can restore any data that is lost or damaged in an attack.
Employ Data Access Control
Data access control enables you to provide access to important data only to those employees who have proper authorization. The goal is to limit the number of people who can access key data instead of allowing blanket access based on employee level or department.
Only those people who need access to certain data receive access, thus reducing the number of vulnerable access points. You also need to restrict physical access to where your data is stored on-premises.
Monitor All Database and Server Activities
It’s also a good idea to create a log of all logins to your enterprise server and databases. Any account that exceeds a specified number of failed login attempts should be flagged for investigation. Attention should be paid to excessive or unusual access from employees.
Utilize Anti-Malware Tools
Many cyberattacks can be blocked by using the proper anti-malware tools. These include both physical and software-based firewalls, anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities, and endpoint protection.
Develop a Cyberattack Response Plan
What happens if your organization is the victim of a data breach or ransomware attack? You need to have a plan in place that outlines your specific responses to different types of cyberattack – what steps to take and who’s responsible for each step.
The goal is to be able to shut down any breach or attack before further damage occurs, recover any lost or damaged data, and get your business up and running again as quickly as possible.
Let Wickr Help You Secure Your Enterprise Communications
Best practices for enterprise data security involve a variety of tools and approaches. To fully protect your organization’s communications, employ Wickr’s suite of secure communication and collaboration tools. The Wickr platform employs military-grade 256-bit end-to-end encryption to all text, voice, and video communications so that your internal messaging remains safe from unauthorized access. Wickr connects your teams safely and securely – wherever they’re located.
Contact Wickr today to learn how we can help you secure your enterprise communications and collaboration.