Data security has become a buzz-phrase in recent weeks…
especially with the revelation of Cambridge Analytica’s involvement with Facebook’s data, and election cycles worldwide.
Now more than ever, ensuring the security and integrity of your customer’s information is a key requirement for business success in today’s modern world.
If you’re doing business in the 21st Century, you’re almost certainly collecting some sort of user data, wittingly or not. How you protect that data will also affect your reputation, with a customer base that’s increasingly aware of data security and protection.
So what steps are needed to ensure data security? The easiest one to take is to ensure all local (or on-premise data) is encrypted.
So why does encryption matter?
Imagine if you were to send someone a sensitive letter, and a malicious party was able to intercept it. Reading your private message and exploiting its contents would be as simple as opening the envelope. With encryption, you essentially scramble the contents of the letter into something that’s unreadable by humans.
Computers, on the other hand, when provided with the correct key, can decrypt these messages.
Through a system of private and public keys, encryption ensures that the only one who can open and views the data you sent is the person you intended to receive it. Even if the data itself were to be intercepted, the information/data gained would be useless.
This is why you’ll want to ensure that all your web traffic is encrypted. This can be accomplished fairly easily through the installation of an SSL Certificate.
Fortunately, many software offerings today do have encryption built-in, with data loss prevention features to protect your information. For example, Windows systems feature BitLocker, a full disk encryption system for encrypting your information.
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, it’s imperative to train your employees in the responsible use of customer data. While it may seem straightforward, ensuring that company policy dictates the ethical use of user data is a key component in ensuring data security. It takes just one disgruntled employee to expose your company to potentially millions of dollars in fines, so ensuring the proper training is not something to skimp on.
By ensuring that your on-premise data is secured along with your web traffic, you can take the first steps in practicing good data security. This need can only be expected to grow as our daily lives become more and more interconnected. Can your company afford to run afoul of this needed security?
Click here to learn more about encryption.