As companies across industries continue to migrate towards a more digital workflow, cybersecurity and data protection have become paramount to keeping your clients' information secure and avoiding costly compliance violations.
Despite the increased push to keeping valuable data safe, cybercriminals continue to find innovative ways to penetrate networks and create problems for companies. That's why it's crucial that you and everyone in your organization follow these helpful security tips when storing your information with a data storage vendor.
Security checklist when using a data storage vendor.
Always back up your important data.
Any business-critical data you have should never be stored solely in one place or on a single device. The risk of it becoming compromised and bringing operations to a halt is too great. Instead, you should always have that information stored in multiple places.
You can use an external drive for physical redundancy, back everything up in the cloud, or send your pertinent files to an outside data storage vendor. This ensures that even if your network is hacked, you'll still have access to everything you need to remain productive.
Provide ongoing training for your team.
One of the most significant challenges to cybersecurity is that hackers continue to create new schemes to gain access to business networks, and that means security measures that work today can quickly become obsolete.
That's why continual education of the latest best practices for your entire team is instrumental to keeping your data safe. You can schedule training sessions on a regular basis that teach employees how to spot suspicious activities and set up safeguards that monitor whether or not everyone is following the recommended security protocols.
Protect your network with a firewall.
Firewalls are one of the most effective ways to keep unwanted visitors out of your private network. These sets of related programs generate specific protocols that can spot suspicious activities and shut down access before your data is compromised.
You can enable the firewall that comes with your operating system manually, or you can download free firewall software online. If you have any employees who work remotely but still access your network, you'll have to activate the firewall on their home systems as well.
Improve your password protection.
If any outside threat manages to access a single employee's network password, then they can wreak havoc on your business. That's why maintaining confidential and effective passwords is key to your overall security strategies.
It's always best to use strong passwords that include numbers, special characters, and a combination of capitalized and lowercase letters. These passwords should also be updated regularly every few months, and you must stress the importance of never sharing passwords with fellow coworkers.
Keep your software up to date.
Many software developers continually release updates to their programs, and regardless of whether you're storing data internally or with a data storage vendor, you should install these updates as they come out.
Typically, the updates include some type of change that's designed to improve the overall user experience, but another common reason for patch releases is to update security features. You can either have someone go in and manually install these updates, or you can set the software up to automatically update as new releases become available.
Are you concerned about your company's data?
Then contact our team of cybersecurity experts here at KPI Network. We are proud to offer our vast network of premier IT providers, data storage vendors, and business solution companies to executive decision-makers around the country.
No matter what your security needs are, we're confident that we can find you the ideal provider with the solutions you need. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive helpful insights and updates on the industry, or you can preview the offers we currently have available.