6 Reasons Your Data Security May Be Primed for a Breach

Cyber security attacks are constantly in the news, but these headlines are generally about big infiltrations affecting millions of customers. Bubbling underneath are all of the many smaller businesses struggling to stay afloat after a breach that can cost millions in lost data, productivity, and downtime. If you’ve assumed that data security isn’t a concern for you because you’re a smaller company and not worth a hacker’s time, think again. You’re low-hanging fruit that a hacker may see as a gateway into providers and business partners with more opportunities.

You don’t have to settle for being a sitting duck. Here are six clues that you might be an easy target for a data security breach:

You’re Trusting in Firewalls: Firewalls were a great solution when data stayed within your own data center. But if you are utilizing applications in the cloud or shared workspaces with business partners, vulnerable data is moving around between your location and out to the cloud, and your firewalls won’t do anything to protect it.

Instead, think about encryption, not only for storing data, but for data in transit as well. Protect the data, not the perimeter.

You Think Passwords Are Enough: Passwords are a bare minimum approach to data security. If your employees aren’t required to use complex passwords and change them often, you’re asking for a breach. And take a walk around the desks or cubicles in your office and count how many passwords are being saved on a Post-it tacked to a monitor. Are you sure your data is secure?

Better than a simple password policy is a multi factor authentication process that pairs passwords with authentication codes emailed to the user or sent to their phones in a text.

You Trust Your Employees: It’s easy to picture a hacker as a shady character who leaves the dark alleyways only for the purpose of infiltrating your network. The real culprit in many cases is an insider. It may simply be someone who was granted access to data they didn’t need for their jobs and unwittingly leaked it. Or it could be a disgruntled employee looking for a way to get back at the organization for a perceived slight.

To protect against insider cyber security issues, take a zero-trust approach to your policies. Limit employees to only the access they require to do their jobs and only within certain contexts.

Training Keeps Moving Down Your Priority List: Your employees are much less likely to make a mistake and leak data if they understand the potential impact of a breach and how it could affect their job viability. You can also provide practical information about how to recognize a phishing email and what to do once they identify one.

You Consider Insurance a Strategy: Many business owners, when faced with the concept of a cyber security breach, get overwhelmed with the planning of a set of policies. Instead, they comfort themselves with thoughts of their cyber security insurance. But that insurance isn’t likely to cover all the costs of a breach – and even with it, many companies struggle to stay afloat after an intrusion.

Your IT Team Forgets About Patches and Updates: Cyber security threats change all the time, and one of your best strategies for staying ahead of them is to download the patches and updates offered by your software providers.

If your company is realizing the importance of data security as part of a broader cyber security plan, contact us at One Connect.