Tip of the Week: 3 Key Factors to Securing Your Data

With data being such a valuable asset today (especially personally identifiable data), you can’t afford to let any of the information your company has access to fall into the wrong hands. The same goes for all of your data, especially that which concerns your employees or your clients. Let’s go over a few tips that should help you keep this data safe, step by step.

Identifying Your Data

When you’re looking to protect the personal information you’ve collected, it is crucial that you know what you have. Otherwise, the likelihood that something will go overlooked just becomes too high and wind up breached as a result.

To avoid this, it is imperative that you record everything, from how your storage architecture is put together to where your most valuable data is stored. If you need to reexamine your stored data and reorganize it, that’s a great opportunity to create your record if you had not done so before. Doing so allows you to adjust your users’ permissions.

Keeping an eye on your data is paramount to properly securing it, and there’s a lot of data that you should be worrying about. Both your customers and your team will entrust you with their data. If you don’t keep it as protected as best practices demand, you could easily find yourself betraying that trust; and, in order to properly protect this data, you need to know how many resources will be required.

Pruning Through Your Data

After you have a handle on where your data is stored and located, you need to examine it more closely. How much of it do you really need in order to continue your operations, and are there alternative strategies that would more effectively accomplish your goals?

As an example, you shouldn’t be retaining your customers’ credit card details for any longer than you absolutely have to for business purposes, as this is just another opportunity for this data to be stolen.

As you sort through this data, you should also be pruning the access that some members of your organizations have. There is just some data that certain employees (or even certain departments) have no reason to access, so allowing this access is just inviting trouble unnecessarily.

Protecting This Data

Of course, keeping your data safe requires some additional considerations, like how you plan to store this data (and how to keep it the safest). Your sensitive data needs to be stored on a predetermined device, protected by comprehensive access controls to prevent unauthorized users from manipulating it. The same needs to be the case for any hard copy data you’ve retained, as well.

If your protections are infiltrated, despite your best efforts, it becomes all the more important to identify the breach and mitigate as much damage as you can. Proactive monitoring and a comprehensive backup can prove particularly valuable to this end.

For assistance in acquiring and implementing these solutions, reach out to Horne & Benik. Our understanding of best practices allows us to optimize your security. To learn more, give us a call at (603) 499-4400.