Facebook, Wells Fargo, Quora. These are just a few of the companies that were among the biggest data breaches in 2018, proving even public companies with hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization and seemingly unlimited resources are not safe from breaches.

Although it might seem that these breaches are random or that their sources cannot be easily identified, they are often due to internal weaknesses in the company that are a result of employee actions or negligence. Measures you can take now to prevent data breaches include increasing security awareness in the company, educating employees on cyber security, and securely backing up data.

Of these, one of the easiest and most impactful actions a company can take is to increase internal awareness of data breaches. Most employees have never directly felt the impact of a data breach and think it highly unlikely to happen to them. Actively talking about local or national data breaches within the company can break the ice and allow for the company to be proactive instead of reactive to data breaches. Illustrating to employees that their actions can lead to a data breach within the company is crucial and will help individual employees feel responsible instead of placing the entire responsibility on managers and executives.

Another important step in preventing a data breach is educating employees. While a good first step, having awareness of data breaches is not sufficient enough on it’s own. Employees need to identify and take proper action when they come into contact with a potential situation that could lead to a data breach.

For employee training, consider interactive sessions where employees deal with simulated aspects of data breaches, including phishing and other security protocols, over long lectures where the chances of retaining enough information for proper action is low. With the average cost of a phishing attack around  $1.6 million , it’s imperative for employees to have proper training in this area.

Lastly, securely backing up data is probably the most important step a company can take. It shouldn’t take an emergency to recognize the importance of backing up data. A data breach that results in not only theft of data but loss of data, whether that of your clients, company, or employees, is exponentially more difficult to deal with and recover from. To combat loss of data, we recommend performing offsite data backups. This is a way for your data to remain safe if disaster strikes and there is physical damage to your location or company.

Fairdinkum offers both colocation of servers and offsite data backup . Some of the other benefits of our disaster recovery plan include secure server hosting in Fairdinkum locations in Virginia, periodic testing, and 24/7 monitoring; this comprehensive coverage of data will provide the best insurance for an organization’s data. Contact us today for a security check to ensure your organization’s data is safe from a breach!

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