Online Data and Security is a layer that guards our personal information against unauthorised access. It covers everything from encrypting data to securing your computer system from cyberattacks. It’s a crucial part of our modern day economy and lives. There’s an incredible amount of data being generated and transmitted as the world economy continues to grow people are turning to social media and life is constantly evolving with technology.
Data breaches are a regular situation that can be devastating to businesses and individuals. The average cost to fix an incident is $8 million, according to an Ponemon Institute report. The cost of lost trust and brand reputation could be even higher.
To protect data, the first step is to identify the data and determine its risk level. This is achieved through the data discovery and classification process. This entails scanning your data repositories and identifying sensitive information. Then, adding labels to define who can see it, and the reason for.
The second is to guard against data exfiltration that is the theft or leakage of sensitive data usually through an unsecure network connection. Firewalls are one method to accomplish this, but there are other simple and free tools on the market, including password managers, VPNs and encrypted storage solutions. It is crucial to enforce strong passwords, and also to use multi-factor authentication on all of your services.
It’s also important to make sure that you have redundant backups for your data in the event of natural disasters or attacks on local servers. This can be achieved through physical replication to a remote data center, cloud environment or by using software such as Acronis Cyber Protect.