Importance of Data Security for Businesses of all Sizes

Our lives have become electronic! From our day to day routine to our work, job or business, we are electronic all over head to toe! Everything that we use has some involvement in electronic systems. And there is a thing about all these electronic systems in common and that is they all need data as a resource to operate and come up with any outcome. Being so crucial, the data needs to be secure in all senses. Companies having this data should take every responsibility to protect it. Whether it is data of people or data in the form of some codes, all of it needs protection and security.

Companies are starting, evolving and dissolving every day. Different kinds of companies dealing in services, products and both. All the companies need data from some or other type. Data could be details of raw materials, processes, people or products. Companies deal with tons of data without even knowing that they might be at the potential threat of data breach, in case, their data is handled by some unauthorized access.

Why Data Security should concern businesses of all kinds?

All businesses and companies feed in their systems with bulks and loads of data in different manners. These chunks of data are very personal with lots of sensitive information accompanied with them. Although commonly believed that the data is secured in the best manner possible, it still has a lot of security threats which, to people are not known easily. Irrespective of the business size, the importance of data security compliance and regulations, is equally important for all.

All data must be secured likewise! 

Data is capital, data is the fortune

The person owning the data at any business or company is the person who should be trustworthy and reliable enough to held responsible for any data. Products, services, financials, consumer data, vendor data are all very crucial details which exist for all businesses and companies.

Data serves the various purpose. It can be used to an analyzer risk, increasing the revenues and also to improve business growth. With the only fact that data is used in so many ways, it becomes the most important capital. Any capital used to enhance or scale business must remain secure and that is how the importance of data should be understood.

Brand Perception

Every business serves some product or service to the user or consumer. Every client of business trusts the brand while providing their mobile number or email address to them. Consumers believe that data will not be misused or passed on to someone else in a rather different manner. Whether you are taking their debit card or credit card, or you are just noting their information in lieu to taking some cash, you are getting the valuable data and you hold the responsibility to keep it safe and secure.

The security threats of data breach might sound like something that would possibly happen to a big wig company but that is so real to happen to even small companies. In fact, according to various studies, there are 48% more chances of the data breach at small companies. All of it is because big companies usually have hierarchies to follow and hence the data breach chances are lesser. However, the smaller companies have lesser complications and the teams are somehow knitted closely. Once someone needs data, nobody will ask for reasons or many questions. Just a little QA and the data would be shared. If you are a senior, chances are that people might not ask for even that either. And that is how data security is more concerning small businesses than at bigger ones! The smaller the company, the bigger is the risk of data security. Undefined data security puts the client’s information at a greater threat. And, your business might be at threat as well. It takes years to build a reputation and just a few seconds to get it ruined.

Unorganized systems are a problem which puts the sensitive data at a higher degree of risk!

How small businesses can fight against data security threats?

The data security is very important and even the slightest breach can lead to heavy losses both intellectually and capitally. The trouble can also result in damaged reputation of the company. The costs invested in keeping the data secure might look big at the moment but in the long run, it is comparatively nowhere to the big wig savings from all kinds of trouble and damages. All businesses must take some strict precautions to protect their data.

1. Data Backup

There must be cloud and offline data backup which must be secure. The data must be backed up regularly. Data backup must not be limited to just creating a folder, but the data must be organized and segmented properly. All the necessary data must be kept in a password-protected folder. And the unnecessary data must be dumped off on a regular. Companies must provide the facility to store data on physical storage devices, dedicated central servers, and online cloud servers.

Timely backups are both the demand and need of the time. Data backups let you stay free from hassle unnecessary burden. The habit of maintaining the data store points help in keeping the versions of various data. That can be used later for any reconciliation. In case of any data losses, the store point can help in getting the data back immediately. The chances of data loss get minimum and also the other losses such as monetary, time and labor needed to rework gets saved. The data in digital form can also get corrupted or infected with a digital virus, just like the physical data in books. However, data backup lets you keep a clean copy of the data. It also lets you have enhanced data security in all ways.

2. Data Recovery

At times the data gets lost due to system failure or update halt or some manual error. At all such events, it becomes necessary to have a data backup that can be referred to get the details again. Any digital data that can no longer be used due to damages is reclaimed with the process of Data recovery. The data recovery becomes reliable, effective and efficient with the regular store point creations or regular data backups. The damages to both the physical device and the digital file can be undone or can be repaired easily to a greater extent with a regular habit of taking and keeping the backups.

Data loss can be due to corrupted systems, malicious attacks or improper hardware handling. No matter what, the pain is always bigger to get the data back and reconcile it with the original one. For optimum data recovery, it is necessary to have an adequately efficient data recovery plan or map for quick recovery of all or fragmented data.

3. Virus and Spam Protection

Just like the germination of physical record, the digital data is also at the threat of getting infected or attacked with virus and malware. This virus leads to the self-replication of the data. The replication is not limited to just data but replication of files and folders, replication to another program, replication of keys and many more are the most commonly known data breach threats.

Virus and malware remain unknown for long until the significant damages appear. Once the damage appears in the form of corrupt data or unauthorized data access or the existence of too many unknown files and folders or unknown file extensions, one gets to know about what they have been attacked.

Virus attacks are as bad as a head injury causing significant memory wipe-out of a person, the only difference being that it causes damage to your digital property and gets detected only at a later stage when a lot of loss has already incurred, leaving you into huge losses.

4. Firewalls

The systems that help in checking the flow of network traffic is termed as a firewall. It controls both the network inside a business or a company and the outside network i.e. the interactions of the business and the company with the outside world. A firewall is capable to work from a local level to a global level.

It limits the user access to certain kind of sites and keeps a check on all kinds of interactions over the internet between one system to another. Thus, it can help significantly in keeping the safety of data from any potential data breach and security threats. It can look for any potential threats in all kinds of suspicious traffic from the system or to the system. Over time, firewalls have proved to be very efficient in terms of protection and curbing any virus or malicious attacks.

There can be software-based firewalls which help in controlling the network traffic and preventing any virus attacks. A firewall mostly follows some fixed set of security rules protecting only a limited type of threats and attacks.

How DigiPrima can help you secure your data and your business?

DigiPrima develops solutions to improve information management and corporate decision-making using the latest artificial intelligence technology.

DigiPrima coexists and works closely with other leading technology providers to offer a collaborative approach to the design and implementation of modern business solutions. Our technology is just one critical part of a broader ecosystem, so we work with channel partners to collectively provide the comprehensive solutions required by clients for optimum information management. Our team of experts is actively working on new technology products to help improve information management.

For healthcare DigiPrima designed to help organizations protect sensitive information and achieve compliance with HIPAA, GDPR and other regulations by identifying and managing access to personal identifiers in both structured and unstructured data. As part of our mission to redefine how organizations use their data, this platform will enable real-time intelligence to assist in forecasting trends and discovering important insights to make informed data-driven and defensible decisions.