3 Ways Hackers Are Getting Their Hands on Your Company Data

company data

IT security breaches that compromise your company data lead to serious financial consequences. Some businesses even lose clients or partners.

For example, Anthem – U.S.’s second-largest health insurer – experienced a breach in 2015 that affected roughly 80.000.000 of their customers. That’s huge. How did it come to this? The company and the FBI are still looking into it.

Those are some shocking number, right? Well, let’s take our mind off of them by having a look at three mistakes you could make when it comes to security.

company data

1. Giving Employees Too Much Access to Sensitive Company Data

Many IT security incidents happen because of employees. Some of them intentionally steal sensitive data. Others don’t have proper training and fall for phishing scams. On other occasions, they simply end up installing malicious software.

Businesses with proper training regarding company data security know how to take care of this.

They grant their employees access to only as much information as they need to do their job. Limiting employee access to certain systems or information is an excellent way to protect your business.

A T-Mobile employee in the Czech-Republic is the latest example of this mistake. He stole 1.5 million customer records and tried to sell them online.

2. Not Encrypting Employee Devices

Let’s think about how many portable devices exist today. Now, think about how many are brought into your company and how many leave it. After all, don’t most of your employees have a smartphone? The answer is most likely a resounding “Yes”.

Encrypting employee devices is a great method to boost company data security.

Encryption is a method of encoding information so that it can be read only by authorized users. To do this, you need the encryption key generated by the algorithm.

Some say the information could be decrypted even without the encryption key. Well, the chances of that happening are extremely low. The hackers would need very large computational resources.

So, if you want to protect your company data make sure you encrypt some of the devices in your business. Alternatively, you can just outsource the services and let specialists optimize everything.

company data

3. Not Having a Proper Response to Breaches

It is important to protect yourself against breaches. Still, if breaches do happen, your business needs to respond properly.

That involves having a good plan. Thus, businesses can reduce many of the costs associated with company data breaches. It also helps prevent losing customers or your reputation being damaged.

Who needs to be informed first? Who should be involved? What should you say about the incident? When and how?

Also, how will you communicate if your emails have been compromised? Decide what stakeholder groups need to be involved:

  • The incident response team
  • The executive team (in some cases the board)
  • Business managers
  • Employees
  • Investors

A great emergency plan will help your company get over the breach faster and easier. If the company data that is compromised involves customers, let them know. Tell them what they need to do. Assure them you’re doing the best you can to keep their information safe.

As a CEO, you surely know that thinking about these aspects is easy – the hard part is putting everything into practice. After all, you’ve got plenty of tasks to handle as it is, so it’s not like you have a lot of time to spare.

Well, we’ve got the solution for you.

LEAP Managed IT is a team of experienced people determined to make technology work for you.

You get properly designed and implemented security and user policies. This way, your network will be secured from the inside out.

Here’s how we can help your company. Feel free to contact us anytime if you have any other questions.

Patrycja Thomas

Author: Patrycja Thomas

Fortune 500 sales and marketing veteran dedicated to helping small businesses change the world with technology.