Data is the lifeblood of any business, allowing companies to function effectively and profitably. Businesses must balance the need to have lots of data, while also having the responsibility to secure and protect customer information. The latter aspect is driven by the new and constantly evolving privacy regulations, like the GDPR in Europe and California’s CCPA, as well as old-fashioned laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Securities and Exchange Commission rules protecting financial information of shareholders and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard for data about consumer payments.
The first step to ensure the security of your data is to catalogue and safeguard all of your data. This means identifying and separating data according to its sensitivity level, and determining access levels. It is crucial to implement policies to safeguard data whether it’s in transit or in rest. Using a solution that detects and monitors file activity and identify anomalous patterns can help you identify suspicious activity and quickly identify and eliminate vulnerabilities, such as incorrectly configured software and out-of-date applications.
A complete backup and recovery plan that includes physical storage media is essential. Last but not least, it is important to ensure that you have a solid system of security, ranging from background checks for new hires to periodic trainings for existing employees, and even terminating employees that no longer require access to critical systems. In addition, it’s essential to develop a disaster recovery plan to ensure that your data is secured in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.