ONLINE PRIVACY AND DATA SECURITY TIPS

Safeguarding a modern organization against digital dangers is a challenging sport: You’ve constantly got to keep one eye on the ball, the other on the terrain in front of you – and work to stay a step ahead of a shifting landscape filled with unexpected hazards.

But incredibly for a source of concern that surfaces every 39 seconds, and that over 80% of businesses expect to face within the coming year, most organizations don’t even have a basic cyber response plan in place. A better approach than winging it, say experts, is to take a more forward-focused stance and train yourself to cultivate the resources and resilience needed to more effectively recover from setbacks, and insure your organization against unpredictable events.

A few simple, high- and low-tech strategies you can start applying to safeguard your business today include:

• Familiarize your employees with your organization’s high-tech security policies the first day they’re hired, and provide workers with regular training every 90 days on the latest new online cybersecurity threats and trends in cybercrime.
• Provide staff with teaching drills and learning exercises based on real-world everyday scenarios that test their ability to detect suspicious activities and appropriately respond to high-tech threats.
• Limit employees’ access to only the files, folders, and applications that are required to perform routine on-the-job tasks, and require multiple parties to sign off on any major, uncommon, or time-sensitive requests.
• Install and regularly update anti-virus, network firewall, and data encryption tools to guard against malware, network compromise, and denial-of-service attacks – and keep sensitive information safe.
• Conduct ongoing vulnerability testing and risk assessments on computer networks and applications to seek out and address possible points of failure before they arise.
• Routinely monitor and scan any device that’s connected to your computer system or network for malware or technological vulnerabilities, and prohibit the use of removable media (e.g. USB or external hard drives) at work.
• Make daily backups of data and files that can be retrieved in the event of system compromise or ransomware (malicious software that holds accounts/networks hostage until large sums of money are paid).

As you can see, online security and data privacy can be challenging to maintain. But when you make a routine habit to exercise certain high-tech habits, it gets much easier.