Information is currently the most valuable asset of any organization. And because of the new general data protection regulation, more and more people are talking about the need to protect data. Unfortunately, not all companies give proper attention to this area, which causes information losses that can seriously jeopardize business continuity. In today’s article, we present essential tips to protect your information!
Reduce the use of removable devices as much as possible
Pens, CD’s, and external disks may contain malicious material that harms the company. By passing these computer-to-computer devices, the likelihood of contaminating equipment with viruses is very high. In addition, sharing data with people outside of your business can greatly compromise data security. However, it is virtually impossible to completely eliminate these everyday devices from your employees. It is difficult to completely eliminate the use of these devices but you can and should implement rules that minimize the risk of data loss, such as the requirement to pass the antivirus before opening a pen, for example. This already helps ensure information protection.
Always sign confidentiality terms
On many occasions, employees and IT service providers need to access confidential business data in order to be able to work. This inevitably poses a risk to businesses because their security may be compromised due to the access of several people to the information. In this way, it is advised that companies sign confidentiality agreements with these persons and entities in order to protect the data. This measure, besides increasing employees’ commitment to information security, also guarantees the legal protection of the company if the data is made public. It is advisable to have sanctions included in these documents in case of non-compliance, because when there are sanctions, the level of commitment is higher!
Training of employees is essential
If employees are not trained to take safety seriously, they will not worry about it on a day-to-day basis. Companies should raise awareness of their human resources to the growing need to protect data as it is a matter that concerns everyone. It is advisable to create a code of ethics and to sign a confidentiality agreement. Once again it is advisable to impose sanctions on the defaulters!
Use data masking
Tools like Datapeers help you ensure the privacy of your data. Technological evolution has transformed the value of the data that are today the most important assets of any organization, because it is through the data that the managers analyze the behavior of the consumers and make important decisions for the future of the companies. Through sophisticated data masking techniques, Datapeers ensures the privacy and protection of information in all environments. Data masking is primarily intended to protect sensitive data against unauthorized access. In practice, data masking tools create a version similar to the original data in terms of structure but without revealing its true information. In fact, its original format remains unchanged, but the data presented are fictitious. That is, in a column of a database with bank information of the users of an online store, it is possible to mask the data by creating new bank numbers in which the figures were “mixed”, creating fictitious numbers but with the same value for the processing of the intended data. The masked data can be used in test and auditing environments, not compromising the result of the analysis, but always guaranteeing the confidentiality of the information.
Be very careful with public networks
We should not connect our devices to public networks such as airports and hotels. You should never enter important personal data when you are connected to a network of this type. If you are out of the office and need access to important information, you should always use a VPN connection. A virtual private network (VPN) is a type of private connection that uses a public network to access your company data. Contains a connection encryption that prevents data interception and IP tracing. This is the safest way to access company data over public networks and should be the only way the company can allow employees to access corporate e-mail outside the internal network.