Data breaches are one of the most common ways hackers gain access to your data, which can be devastating for organizations and individuals alike. Thankfully, there are some key ways to prevent a data breach from happening.
Data breaches can be prevented in several ways, including by; securing devices and networks, limiting access and exposure to sensitive information, and increasing the visibility and control of protected assets.
Securing Devices and Networks
Preventing a data breach starts with controlling how employees can access information. Awareness is the first step in this process, so users learn what they should and shouldn’t do with company data, how to handle that data securely, and what to do if they see any security breaches or are suspicious of someone else’s activity.
New technologies are constantly being developed to prevent unauthorized access, and it is critical to implement any new technologies as soon as they are made available.
Multiple layers of security are needed to prevent a data breach, including network security controls, endpoint device control, encryption and authentication measures, identity management solutions, logging and monitoring solutions, access governance tools.
The company should make sure that all employees follow the proper security policies, update those security policies as necessary to reflect new technologies or changes in business needs, and forbid employees from working with data that is not essential for their job functions.
Employees should immediately report any suspicious activity they see. For example, if a company suspects that a breach has occurred, it should take immediate steps to find out who accessed information, contain the damage caused by the breach, and attempt to recover quickly.
Limit Access and Exposure of Sensitive Information
Ensuring that all sensitive information is protected from unauthorized access or exposure is critical. You can do this through employee training, security policies, data loss prevention solutions, encryption technologies, data classification tools, and authentication barriers.
Companies should restrict access to sensitive information only to those workers who need it to perform their jobs. Users should be required to complete complex passwords or passphrases on every device they use. Additionally, companies must store all data with strong encryption managed by a central authority.
Password managers can help normal users by creating long, complex passwords for every service or website they have an account for and automatically filling those credentials in whenever they visit that site.
Increase Visibility and Control of Protected Assets
The company needs to know where its assets are located at all times so it can quickly take control if a breach occurs. Additionally, it needs to track and monitor employee activity on the network for signs of misuse or unusual behavior that may signal a data breach.
There should also be policies to ban employees who violate these standards from accessing any company resources ever again. Regular audits will help ensure compliance with all security policies, so they must be performed regularly.
Whenever there is evidence of suspicious behavior, the company must immediately look at all of its data to determine what was taken and who was responsible for stealing it. Furthermore, if any unauthorized access to protected assets occurs, the company must take immediate action to contain the damage and begin to recover from it as quickly as possible.
This will require getting in touch with ITAD providers like Avail Recovery, the leading ITAD recovery service provider, to recover all of the lost data.
Avail Recovery is on your side
To prevent breaches like this from happening in the future, companies should take these steps to secure their assets and increase visibility into how they are stored and accessed by employees.
Contact us for a free quote and project assessment to learn more about how Avail Recovery can help you recover from a data breach and many of our other services like data destruction and even complete data center decommissioning.
