According to the Cost of a Data Breach 2022 report by IBM, data breaches on a global level cost companies $4.35m. At the same time, there were 1802 US companies affected by data breaches in 2022. However, as all industries are digitalizing and adopting new technologies, they are also getting exposed to potential data breaches.
Apart from revenue loss, companies who have a data breach also suffer damage to their brand reputation, lose intellectual property, lose sales, get unexpected expenses, legal penalties, etc.
This article will discuss how to prevent data breaches and limit their effects on your organization.
Invest in Employee Training
The human factor is the most dangerous element when it comes to cybersecurity. IBM Security’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2022 report shows that most breaches come from user-focused attacks. In other words, hackers focus on individuals and not vulnerabilities within tools or IT infrastructures.
The lack of proper cybersecurity education is the key reason so many employees are successfully targeted. That’s why you must create a culture of cyber-mindfulness that transcends mere threat awareness. Employees must be alert and expect new threats while having a sense of responsibility for business and personal information.
Implement a Full-Blown Data Security Strategy
A data security strategy or policy determines your risk tolerance for every data category. This means analyzing data sensitivity and applying the necessary protection measures. A data policy also uses historical information and security practices to recognize a data access framework that provides the right people access to the right data for the right length of time.
Luckily, any business can quickly implement a data security platform that includes a complete overview of all security factors, systems and measures.
A security strategy also helps companies:
- Take the right steps to prevent unauthorized people from accessing your data
- Prevent productivity issues due to data protection measures
- Create and manage backups effectively to prevent threats while ensuring availability
With a solid data security strategy in place, we can move on to the next important step.
Create a Robust Data Access Framework
Data access control is a system or method used to control employee data access. It includes various strategies like the principle of least privilege. Companies manage employee access rights based on their role, data type, projects, etc. This method ensures that the wrong people don’t manage or use data.
Many companies store business and personal data, and protecting these files with the right access control system is crucial. There are various data access control methods, but the data-centric method is the most important for preventing data breaches. It involves setting up rules regarding data access at the data level rather than using entities. For example, only users with a specific application can access some datasets.
Invest in Backups and Data Recovery
Sometimes data breaches are unavoidable. In those cases, your data might be deleted or lost. One of the ways to mitigate this is to back up your data so you can recover it. Sometimes data doesn’t get lost due to malicious attacks but because of unexpected events like natural disasters, power outages, hardware malfunction or server crashes.
The first step is finding the right backup solutions. The best ones are cloud storage backups because they are safer and can secure data remotely. Create a regular backup schedule so that the restored data is up to date.
Of course, you can’t back up all your data because it is expensive, so recognize and secure your most crucial datasets.
Use Encryption Tools
Even if you use the most sophisticated security measures to protect your data, this doesn’t guarantee your data won’t end up in the wrong hands. However, there are ways you can make it more difficult for someone to find your information and steal it, such as data encryption.
Encryption tools also prevent people from viewing the content of your data, even if they can steal it. There are numerous encryption tools you can use to make your data inaccessible. For example, a good VPN can encrypt your network traffic and prevent anyone from seeing what your employees send or receive online.
You can also use tokenization to replace your data with tokens that act as surrogates for the actual information. This type of data can’t be accessed without valid numbers that can unlock your files and retrieve the actual information.
Conclusion
Setting up a fool-proof security system to prevent data breaches is almost impossible. Companies that do this end up hindering their productivity as employees have to deal with many security checks, access permissions, third-party security tools, etc.
The best course of action is to create a balance between data protection and damage mitigation. Investing in employee security training and implementing the security strategies and tools mentioned above can prevent data breaches from harming your organization.