If you’re operating a small business, it’s obvious why having to deal with a security breach of any kind could be a massive setback. You likely don’t have all of the resources on hand if the proper precautions haven’t been taken, and the relationship with customers, clients, or even fellow employees that trusted you w their sensitive information could very well be at jeopardy. To avoid all of the drama and messiness of this sort of situation, it’s beneficial to take a look at what you can do in order to improve your data security.
1 – Create A Policy For Classifying Data
With a solid data classification strategy in place, you will be able to take the reigns over who is able to access data, as well as how they can about it if they’ve been approved. Data classification generally involves taking stock of all the data you have and then categorizing it in as detailed a manner as possible. After this, you can establish multiple layers of security and come up with policies that determine how access to each of them should be handled.
The way you go about this is up to your own discretion. A general guideline is to consider the three following tiers of security however:
– Public
Obviously, public info will be of the lowest security level. You have to be confident that any info classified as such will not put your business or anyone involved with it at risk in any way if it were to be accessed by someone unapproved. Any information generally released in the likes of case studies, sales reports, or fiscal summaries is generally safe enough to be considered public information.
– Private
The next level of security is for moderately sensitive information. Anything that is best kept out of view from anyone unwelcome obviously needs to be classified as private at the very least. The only ones who should have access to any private business info are employees. In many cases, this information is generally only distributed among the leading staff members.
– Restricted
Restricted data is anything that could lead to serious consequences were it to reach the wrong hands. You need to make sure anything of this sort is as heavily protected as possible. No public access should be possible, and even many employees will also be cut off. You may have different levels of classification for your restricted data, each more secure than the last. This is of the utmost importance in making sure your business is not compromised in any way.
2 – Implement EMV Payments
EMV payments have been gaining more and more traction in discussions about business as of late. Many businesses that don’t prioritize card payments with EMV chips are facing consequences for opening up customers and the associated company to potential fraud. Having EMV terminals for your card payments is more essential than ever, and it’s going to become the norm moving forward. This is the best way to protect your business from angry customers blaming you for fraudulent charges.
3 – Encrypt Your Devices
It doesn’t matter if your company’s data is completely cloud based; there’s always the chance that sensitive data could find its way onto openly accessible computer hard drives or even personal devices. Disk encryption can make sure that you are well protected even if this happens. A lot of the latest, greatest hand held and mobile devices have encryption functionality already built in. If you’re not sure of how to get started, you should be able to find easy tutorials fairly easily with a cursory search if you’re unable to locate useful info in any user manuals you still have access to. Check out this piece on IT security breaches by Barclay Simpson – its well worth a read if you are interested in this area.
4 – Improve Your Passwords
Complexity of company passwords is one of the most commonly overlooked aspects of business security. It’s imperative that you don’t use anything that could easily be guessed. The more cryptic the password, the safer the content its meant to guard will be.
