Ten Ways to Prevent Data Breaches

What Is a Data Breach?

A data breach is probably one of the most prominent problems in cybersecurity. Managing the network of a business is already a tedious task in itself. Still, there’s also the risk of having the confidential information of your business leaked to a third party. In most cases, businesses with organized and robust network security won’t have to worry about their database being hijacked by hackers. However, if a breach happens, companies are obligated to notify individuals who have their information stored in the company’s database for transparency. 

A data breach happens when someone without authorization to a certain set of files accesses it through illegal means. To provide an analogy in the physical world, it’s basically when someone who doesn’t have the right to enter a certain storage facility does so by sneaking into the backdoor or any other opening. In the digital space, however, there’s a more concerning hazard: hackers can create bots to automate their hijacking methods and make a duplicate of your data in a matter of seconds. This includes confidential data like bank account information, sensitive information about your company’s new product, etc. 

Fortunately, computer science has come a long way within the past few decades. Now, it’s possible to list out the best practices to minimize the risk of experiencing a data breach. We’ll be going over them in this article and explaining how these tips can help you shoo away unwelcome individuals from your data storage. 

1. Keep Your Cybersecurity Software Up to Date

In the same way that companies are always trying their best to improve their products and services, methods and tools of hackers also evolve over time as technology develops in the digital space. With that said, cybersecurity companies that provide the tools to lock away your storage also have to find a way to prevent the new technology of hackers from brute-forcing their way into your system. 

It’s important that you’re able to update your security software as soon as it’s available because there’s a good chance that they have also found a way to integrate new features in their software. This ensures that you can fix and minimize the risk of the potential or already existing weak spots in modern computers that hackers will likely exploit. 

2. Make a Data Backup

It’s already a given among cybersecurity professionals, or any profession in any industry for that matter, that any confidential and sensitive information needs to have a backup. Cybersecurity is no less different, as there are hackers out there who specifically target storage to destroy the files and leave no traces of them looking into whatever files they want to acquire. 

In the case of a personal computer, backup and recovery is still an important aspect of taking care of your data. Whether it’s family vacation images or personal projects, ensuring that you have dedicated storage to hold all those important files provides you with a certain assurance that you’re not going to lose them from a cyber-attack easily. 

According to Norton, one in ten computers in the world is infected by a certain kind of virus every month. At the same time, 30% of people who own an electronic device to store important files don’t bother making backups. These are alarming statistics, indicating that people still don't exactly know how to protect themselves in the digital space. 

3. Perform Staff Training and Awareness

Let’s face it, not everyone in the company is tech-savvy. Unless you work with a small team of cybersecurity developers, there will always be one who is unaware of what they are doing on the Internet. With that in mind, it’s becoming more and more necessary for businesses to make sure their employees are properly trained about the basic practices of cybersecurity. 

It’s easy for hackers to get into a company's database and look at the information they can use to steal money or other important assets by manipulating employees to give them access. One of the best things to start would be educating your employees about the importance of having basic knowledge of data privacy. 

4. Have a Different Password for Every Account

Passwords themselves can be a hazard. If you only have one password for every social media account, a hacker can gain access to all of these accounts when they get a hold of your password. 

5. Identify Malicious Websites

Setting up a computer is a long process, but it’s a basic process where you can simply follow the procedures to make sure everything is working smoothly. This includes setting up your network for the computer to gain access to the Internet.  

The Internet is a vast space, so there’s no doubt that viruses like Trojan horses and worms can also be found in any part of it. There are a lot of links circulating social media platforms that are designed to lure in hopefuls about winning certain items and cash prizes, but they are actually linked to scam websites and potentially dangerous download links to .exe programs that can harm the computer and leak private data. 

6. Blacklisting Networks

This tip extends the previous one, but it can also be a whole new field of preventing a data breach. There’s something that people often overlook once the browser and software needed for a company computer are operational, and that is to blacklist certain websites and networks. 

Instead of simply blocking websites, you also need to ensure that the very network you’re using is grounded on an updated security measure. For instance, in a coffee shop, employees, especially remote ones, prefer working and using public Wi-Fi to be productive. The Wi-Fi in these establishments is more likely to be public. Thus, other people connected to the same network might snoop around your activities on the internet and can see what you are doing. With that said, using security subscriptions like VPNs would be a great help. 

7. Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication, simply called MFA, is a recently developed security measure that more and more online platforms have been utilizing over the years. It allows users to connect their accounts to another device and complete their login attempts. 

For instance, a user wants to access their profile in a gaming publisher platform called Steam, and they have set up two-factor authentication. After entering their credentials on the login page, Steam’s system will send a one-time password (OTP) code to their corresponding mobile number, and they will have to enter it on the login page. This confirms that the person trying to enter the credentials is actually the registered user. 

However, in other platforms that offer slightly more security, it might need more than just a one-time password. It will also require the user to unlock their profile with fingerprint credentials. This is an important aspect of identification, basically to help the security of online platforms to automate the process of properly identifying users without personally checking on the account activities themselves. This can be implemented in any platform that requires a login page, as it helps their security check and thus prevents a data breach. 

8. Third Party Data Security Evaluations

In the case of eCommerce websites, one of the most important things to do before setting up the option for users to pay with their credit and debit cards is to have your security system get tested by a third-party firm, especially actual cybersecurity companies who perform thorough cybersecurity evaluation. 

In a company in general, it’s not only through your employees that you have to protect your private data. You have to make sure that customers' data in your platform are also equally protected. Since most eCommerce websites aim to grow their platform bigger and bigger compared to small businesses with their niche markets, you can’t afford to slack on the privacy of your users. This will reflect on your reputation as an eCommerce website. With a robust and regularly checked security system, people will trust your website more than other platforms emerging on the internet. 

eCommerce scams also exist, and that’s one of the things that you have to avoid being associated with. Hackers can directly hijack the website's database and try to get the money from customers, leaving you with no option but to close the business altogether if you’re not careful. 

9. Least Privilege Management

Just because someone in your company has access to certain parts of the database, it doesn’t always mean that you can be rest assured that they can also safely access other things they don’t even need to have. Much like the level of position in a company that makes a huge difference, there should also be a structure in the employees on who can access certain data. 

To do this, you have to align access to the roles and responsibilities of employees and make sure that you only give the employees access to the data they need to perform their jobs properly. This will help reduce the likelihood of attackers taking over the whole database through a single person. You will have an easier time identifying and containing the problem in a scenario where a data breach indeed happens. 

10. Enforcing BYOD Policies

Bring Your Own Device, or simply BYOD, is a trend that rose in popularity recently when it was first implemented by Intel, a technology industry giant in the US. This is an efficient method for companies to drastically cut expenses since they can just let employees bring their own devices and connect them to the company’s networks. Among other things, it was also shown that employees tend to have more productivity navigating their own devices since they are already familiar with them. 

Now that more and more companies are implementing remote work, or at least hybrid office settings, the situation where employees have to provide their own devices also further rose in the list of trends. This way, it’s easy to establish workflow online and have them access their tasks through their own devices. They don’t need to personally go to the office and access the files they need to perform their job, as they can already do that wherever they are, as long as they have their electronic devices. 

With that said, BYOD doesn't come without risk. The potential hazard you can encounter here is that the line between personal and professional life in a device tends to be thinner than before. Private data of employees that are sensitive can leak over to the company’s database, and even a simple accident like that can damage the company and the individual. 

Therefore, you have to orient your employees around the policies you are imposing along with BYOD. This can include creating a separate email address for work and personal use to make the line clearer or training the employees to be mindful about properly separating messages between their personal and professional lives. BYOD is also more vulnerable to theft since most data these days are already being mined by big data tech companies to feed them to their algorithms and create and bombard users with strangely accurate ads. 

Final Thoughts

A data breach can be difficult to handle since not everyone knows their way around a computer. However, there are certain basic things that you can do to prevent this from happening, starting with getting your computer systems regularly checked for viruses and potential weak spots and setting up a robust security system to ensure that you won’t be experiencing any kind of leak in the future. After all, prevention is better than cure. In this case, you are trying to stop the bleeding once a data breach actually happens to you. 

To make sure that you are secured from potential cyber-attacks, simply making the right choices, such as separating the information of your personal life from work and using different passwords from every account, can go a long way. Even when designing your network as a small business team, there’s always a risk of your information being stolen. 

It could be that you have something valuable like full information on the design of new groundbreaking technology, and you’re trying to organize your notes on your computer. Once this information is leaked to the public before you can even finish it and make money off it, it will be a drastic loss to you.

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