Ensuring data privacy is essential for businesses of all sizes but is particularly important for small businesses. Any breach of data or data losses can cost significant amounts of money that small businesses can ill afford.
Unfortunately, if small businesses don’t have the budget to handle a data breach, they probably don’t have the money for proper security measures to monitor and prevent security incidents.
Cybercrime is a real threat to businesses and customers, so preventing it should be a key concern for your small business. But how can SMBs keep sensitive information private and ensure that any data they hold about their customers are safe and secure? Here are some bite-sized tips to get started.
Educate Yourself And Your Employees
First, educate yourself on the importance of data privacy—not only as a business owner but also as an individual.
Websites and advertisers collect your sensitive information as you use the internet. Sensitive information may include your Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as your full name, date of birth, telephone number, email address, physical address, bank details, or social security number.
Not every site collects this much information on you, but this data can be misused in the wrong hands. Therefore, we recommend that you take several steps to protect your sensitive information and educate your employees.
For example:
- Create strong and unique passwords for all your online accounts
- Shred important documents before disposing of them
- Avoid opening suspicious emails or text messages
- Learn about the latest fraud schemes
- Opt out of data brokers (companies that trade data for a profit)
If your data is already in the hands of hundreds of brokers, use a data removal tool to save you thousands of hours of manual work and strengthen your protection against cybercrime.
It is crucial to properly train your employees by offering workshops that will help them understand the importance of data privacy while explaining the abovementioned steps. Timely training will ensure everyone is on the same page but also avoid potential problems in their professional and personal lives.
Make Copies Of Critical Data
When it comes to storing and handling data, the fact is that sometimes things can go wrong. You can minimize this impact by ensuring that you use the Cloud to back up all critical data for your business.
Getting into a system is a thrill for hackers—it’s not personal (usually). If a hacker tricks you, it’s because you let them with your lax security protocols and auditing. Hackers will take your files, corrupt the files on your systems, and humbly request a ransom to return the key to decrypt them.
Even if you pay the ransom, they’ll still have copies of your files to sell on the black market.
But what if you had a backup? The hackers would still have your files, but you would too. You lost customer data, but you didn’t have to pay the ransom.
You already know the solution: Store your files in more than one location!
Don’t forget to periodically test your solution to make sure it works. An untested solution is not a solution.
Keep Your Software Up To Date
Do you know that annoying little pop-up that tells you to update your system or schedule a time to install critical updates? Don’t keep ignoring it.
The older the system or software, the more susceptible you are to cyber-attacks and data breaches. Experienced cybercriminals can easily break into those systems. You can combat this by ensuring that your software, operating system, and antivirus software are all as up-to-date as possible.
Schedule a recurring appointment to install updates and ask your employees to do the same. We’ll discuss remote monitoring and management software next.
