Under Lock and Key: Expert Tips for Storing Data at Your Business

Before the age of the internet, businesses would never leave papers with confidential information lying around for everyone to see. Instead, they would take extra care to lock them up in vaults, secure file cabinets, or fireproof boxes.

Why should your digital data security be any different? If you haven’t taken that same level of extra care to protect your confidential files, you could be leaving client information vulnerable to attack.

Here are four security tips you should keep in mind when storing data for your business.

1. Standardize Your Data Storage

Without a standardized storage protocol, it’s far too easy for confidential information to slip between the cracks and go missing.

Make sure that your team knows exactly where each type of business information should be stored and what devices they’re allowed to access it from. The last thing you want to happen is for someone to store client info on a personal mobile device or USB drive and lose it while traveling.

2. Keep Your Info Under Lock and Key

The modern parallel to the lockboxes of old is end-to-end data encryption. Encryption works by scrambling your data into a code so that even if a third party gets ahold of it, they can’t make sense of the information. The only people with access to the real data are the “ends” (the sender and recipient).

It’s impossible to keep your confidential information 100% safe from digital attack. As such, encrypting your data while it’s sitting in archives and when you’re sending it between people is a necessary step to keep it safe from hackers.

3. Use Cloud Storage or Virtual Data Rooms

Virtual data rooms and cloud storage are great ways to protect your data from being compromised at your physical location. If your office has a fire, flood, or ransomware attack, your data will still be stored securely online. Virtual data rooms are also useful because they allow your team to access data from wherever they’re working, without having to send each file as an email attachment.

The one caveat to this method is that when you’re storing data on any type of external server, it’s like you’re storing it on someone else’s computer. That’s why it’s so important to encrypt your data before you upload it, and make sure you’re familiar with your storage provider’s data privacy, backup, and security policies.

Visit this blog to learn more about what’s happening in the world of virtual data rooms.

4. Educate Your Team

Some of the worst data breaches in recent years were due, at least in part, to untrained or negligent staff. In fact, a 2018 study found that over 40% of small business owners and executives blame accidental data loss and employee negligence for their most recent incident.

That’s why it’s so important to provide data security training to every member of your team. They don’t all have to become security experts, but they should understand basic concepts including:

• How to watch for phishing scams
• Allowing computer updates to run instead of snoozing them
• How to avoid clicking on dangerous links
• Using strong password protection
• How to store login information
• Keeping screens private when working with sensitive data

Just one hour-long data security in-service for the office can go a long way toward keeping your information safe.

Is Your Business Storing Data Securely?

If storing data safely is important to your business, follow these tips to get started on the right track.

When you’re ready to start keeping a closer eye on your business’s data security, check out our options for reliable website monitoring. Contact us today to learn more.