General Tips to Maintain Security In Your Organization

Fifteen year old Amrit Chana might know more about cyber security than you or me. Schools and students are investing more time and resources to educate children how to safely use the web and the associated systems in daily life. That is the pace at which our world is moving.

Anybody who uses a digital system, be it a computer,  a mobile device or even a table knows the importance of cybersecurity.

Perhaps, the need for cybersecurity is more intensely felt by small businesses than anyone else. A Ponemon Institute study found that more than 50% of US companies suffered a security breach in 2016.

Is your organization’s data security at risk? By all means, it must be. Hackers have become far sharper and prudent in finding their way into the most secured systems and networks.

Even if you installed the latest and most expensive anti virus, chances are that cyber criminals will find their way into your organization’s secret vault of sensitive data.

But, there is hope. Technology can be the right weapon to destroy the same dangers it poses for your organizational data.

In today’s post, we will explore some ways how your business can stay protected and in times of increasing cyber crimes. These security mechanisms will help you maintain the data security, integrity and confidentiality of your organization.

Use Virtual Private Networks

A Virtual Private Network is your safest bet to exchange confidential information across the Internet. It creates a safe and encrypted passage that allows for exchange of organizational information without the fear of data leaks, security breaches or interception.

Encryption is made possible with the help of a SSL certificate. In organizations, for the purpose of website, a EV SSL certificate will be required. A EV SSL certificate is the highest form of SSL encryption available. It is issued only after thorough verification of organizational details like domain ownership, location, IP details and so on. That makes replicating a website or creating a fake one next to impossible.

Virtual Private Networks also ensure that only registered or authorized users to a network has access to the network. This makes it an ideal fit for corporates who want to have a closed-door policy for data exchange.

Schedule Automatic Data Backups

Data backups can come as a saviour in a worst case scenario when your data is held hostage in a ransomware attack. Taking regular data backup is a challenge. You have to ensure that all the data ie retained, the revisions are kept separate for quick retrieval, redundant data is removed to save storage space and much more. Most importantly, you have to stick to a schedule so that you do not miss out on taking the data backup itself.

Thus it is recommended that you schedule automatic data backups. Automatic data backups trigger into action at a predefined time or when the data volume reaches a particular limit. It saves you from the manual task of remember when to take the backup, how much to take and in what measure. Automatic data backups will ensure that you always have an updated and original data bank to rely on even when a ransomware attack takes you by surprise.

Opt For Dedicated Server Hosting

Designing and launching a website with shared hosting is simple. However, there is a hidden peril in that. Shared hosting can be easily hacked and and exploited. It takes just one one server to be affected to bring down rest of the servers in the shared hosting. In most cases, shared hosting providers do not provide state-of-the-art security measures required to secure your data.

Opting for a secured dedicated server hosting will ensure that you can manage and monitor your server bit by bit and ensure that it is safe at all corners. It also helps in spotting in data anomalies that might hint the possibility of a cyber attack, like a Man-In-The-Middle attack or spyware presence.

Create Employee Cyber Security Awareness

Innocent mistakes that employees make have caused the biggest security breaches of recent years. Lack of proper training and understanding of cyber security is touted to be the biggest reason why most cyber security crimes occur.

Improving employee awareness about cyber security can help prevent a large chunk of these crimes. Some measures that can be instantly adopted include:

  • Requesting mandatory password changes every month
  • Setting minimum password strength parameters for organizational log ins
  • Discourage a culture of password sharing across the organization

Run Regular Security Audits

Periodic security audits helps pinpoint issues in your data security.

  • Is data available to users who have no business working with it?
  • Are there proper multi-layer access controls for sensitive information?
  • Is the information encrypted to allow only those with digital keys to access them when needed?

These are some things that a security audit can help unravel.

Other things that you can try to cover in a regular security audit include:

  • Software updates and security patches installation
  • Secure Data stored in NoSQL DBs
  • Detect possible backdoor entries and plug loopholes
  • Set up an automatic backup system and ensure it is working glitch-free
  • Access to backup data is kept offline and disconnected from network
  • All network devices are properly secured using encryption or similar means

There are still more checks that you can add to the security audit checklist to ensure that it is happening at ideal standards.

Conclusion

In today’s tech infested world, organizations needs to rethink their security strategy to secure their data at all times. Old age practices may not seem ideal anymore. There is an increasing need to include employees as active stakeholders, so that they understand the implications of cyber security and contribute to the safekeeping of organizational data.

While there is no complete checklist on how to secure your data, these security tips that have been listed above are a good start. They can help secure your servers, backups and other areas where sensitive information is being handled on a regular basis.

Got any more security mechanisms to protect and maintain security of organizational data? Feel free to let us know.