How To Tell If Your Business Is About To Spring A Data Leak

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Data leaks kill businesses, and not only the small or medium-sized companies. Some of the biggest breaches of the 21st-century have happened to huge corporations that have struggled to regain consumer confidence. 

 

Do you think it’s a coincidence that Uber lost its London licence after admitting it leaked customer data and never told anyone?

 

Whether you’re an SME or a name brand, you’ve got to keep your information secure if you want to inspire trust. Sadly, lots of organizations have gaps in their strategies that make hacks more likely.

 

To plug the holes, you should know what they are. Here are four of the biggest causes that you should address.

 

Too Many Permissions

 

Getting employees to ask for permission before they enter a certain part of the server or attempt to gain access to sensitive data is commonplace in the industry. However, businesses are beginning to scale back their permissions for several reasons. As well as the fact that it ruins productivity, having too many of them is a security breach as you might give the wrong person access. Alternatively, with so many to regulate, you could forget to upgrade an out of date permission. The latter is like catnip to a hacker.

 

Standard Processes

 

Antivirus software is the foundation of your security plan, but it shouldn’t stop there. To ensure that your protocols are tight, you have to branch out and invest in a range of intermediate to advanced safety features. For example, notice inspections will highlight the weak spots, while outsourced experts will create solutions and action them instantly. Your company’s cybersecurity compliance is about going the extra mile as that’s what it takes to cover every base. If you implement standard procedures and leave it at that, you’re bound to be a target for hackers as you’re easy prey.

 

Weak Passwords

 

Harping on about poor passwords might be a cliche, but it’s still a huge problem throughout the industry. Currently, research suggests that 80% of all hacking breaches are down to weak credentials, such as passwords. So, even though employers and employees understand the danger, there isn’t much being done to prevent the escalation. Thankfully, you can act as you’re the boss. A simple-yet-powerful trick is to make workers renew their login details every seven to fourteen days as this should ensure that everyone’s details are protected. Other than that, passwords must include an upper and lower case letter, a number, and a special character.

 

No Training

 

It’s easy to say that you expect the above to take place within your company, yet you’ve never trained your employees on how to act. How are they supposed to know what constitutes a healthy of corporate security if they can’t read your mind? The only way to make sure they follow the rules is to teach them what they are and how to implement them in real-time. Whether that’s password or data protection, you shouldn’t presume they know how to act.

 

Are these signs familiar? If so, what will you do to improve your company’s security levels?