Data is you can find out more vital to any business. It helps it operate efficiently and profitably. Companies must balance the need to collect a lot of data with the requirement to safeguard and secure customer data. The latter point is driven by the ever-changing privacy regulations, like California’s GDPR and Europe’s CCPA and long-standing laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Securities and Exchange Commission regulations that protect shareholders’ financial information and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard for data about consumer payments.
To protect your data first, you need to catalog all your data and safeguard it. This includes identifying and classifying data according to its sensitivity and determining access levels. It is also important to establish a policy that ensures data protection, even when the data is in motion or in rest. Using a tool to detect and monitor the activities of your files and detect anomalous patterns will help you detect suspicious activity and quickly identify weaknesses like out-of-date or misconfigured software.
A comprehensive plan for backup and recovery that includes physical storage media will be crucial. It is also essential to implement effective security measures, from background checks on hiring candidates and regular training for existing employees to the decision to terminate employees who no longer need access to critical systems. In addition, it’s essential to develop a disaster recovery plan to ensure that your data is secured in the event of a natural or human-caused catastrophe.