Thousands of breaches are reported every year, impacting more than 85 million records and exposing reams of valuable information. Compared to 2014, the percentage of leaks is up to 1,000% from 500%. If you think leaks don’t happen to small and medium-sized businesses, then you’re mistaken.
SMEs are targeted more often than big corporations because they lack the resources to negate attacks. As a result, your standing in the industry could suffer, as will your lead generation, sales, and profit margins.
Thankfully, startups can learn a thing or two from the big companies that take breaches seriously. Here are the four traits you should try and instill in your business.
Corporate Compliance
Creating policies and getting employees to invest in them is essential, but we’ll get into that later. Before they can start to do their bit, you and the rest of the corporate hierarchy need to treat security with respect it deserves. That means stop palming it off as something you need to do and start thinking of it as an investment. With the correct attitude, the policies you craft should be tailor-made to the business and not generic and ineffective. And you’ll spend more money on security rather than cutting corners.
Employee Awareness & Investment
Employees need to be more than aware of the ways they are potentially leaking info – they must invest in the business’ policies. One way to do this is to ensure training is exciting and interesting. Hiring a hacking expert to try and infiltrate the server and getting them to blunt the attack should make the process interactive and engaging. That way, the stuff they have to learn to maintain a secure environment, such as strong passwords, won’t seem as dull. Social engineering also focuses on phishing and noticing strangers entering the building while testing their responses, so it’s a holistic strategy.
Internal Barriers
Employees are the main sources of data breaches, but they aren’t the only problem. People will try and walk into the office and glean as much information as possible before anyone recognizes that they shouldn’t be there in the first place. That’s why secure offices take internal barriers, such as doors that require ID cards, seriously and implement across the board. There’s no reason for them to be cumbersome or annoying, either as a retractable badge holder makes swiping in and out a breeze. Aside from electronic passes, be sure your security/front desk asks guests to sign-in so that there’s a record.
Regular Analysis
A standard feature of a secure company, one that’s ignored by vulnerable businesses, is the desire to be safer. They undergo regular analysis of their security so that they can spot weak points and reinforce them where necessary. After all, it takes years to build a reputation and one second to destroy it. The regularity of the process is essential as technological advancements make businesses a potential target if they don’t evolve. Therefore, you should keep tabs on the market and how it changes to invest and implement the tech that will keep hackers and thieves at arm’s length.
Is your security up to standard? What can you do to safeguard your sensitive information further?
