How to Reduce and Mitigate Data Leaks
In the first article about data leakages, we took a deep dive into the causes and consequences that follow when private information from your business gets into the wrong hands.
Preventing unauthorised access to privileged information is essential for every company in the digital age. In this article, we take a look at some policies you can implement to secure your data and take you through a response plan that you can implement if a data leak occurs.
Plugging the leak before it happens
The majority of data leaks are not malicious. They usually take place as a result of human error, and it’s not easy to prevent your team from making mistakes no matter how well you train them.
However, it’s important and possible to implement systems that take away the potential for major data loss as a result of employees making simple mistakes.
Here are a few strategies you can employ in your business to secure your data against leakages
Train your team
- IT security training is essential for all company employees in a modern business;
- As part of this training, you’ll want to brief your team on secure email policy, how to identify risky behaviours, and why it’s important to never share sensitive company information with outsiders.
Implement zero trust security
- Data leaks take place when the wrong person has access to your information;
- Limit your team’s data privileges so that each member can only access files and other information that are essential to their tasks.
Automate your tracking and monitoring
- There are many excellent types of software that will allow you to monitor suspicious behaviour like sensitive files being emailed outside of the organisation or unknown users accessing your folders.
- Automatic alerts and access denials can be built in to help you respond swiftly to a data leak.
Mitigate data leaks within your organisation by further enforcing cybersecurity best practices, such as;
- Controlling devices with a Mobile Device Management solution
- Implement robust email security policies
- Ensure strong printer controls
- Enforce real-time data auditing
What to do if a data leak takes place
As with any security event, time is of the essence when you realise that a data leak has taken place in your business.
As soon as the leak is brought to your attention you should take the following steps to minimise the damage it may cause.
- Identify the responsible party. This calls for a lot of honesty and trust between you and your team but it’s always better to admit your involvement in a data leak than trying to hide it.
- Understand exactly what’s been leaked. By documenting the number of files that have leaked out of the organisation and knowing what they contain, you’ll have a good idea of what information could potentially be in the wrong hands.
- Beef up your security to prevent future leaks. Once you understand exactly how the leak occurred you can take steps to ensure that the same chain of events never occurs again. This will help secure your company’s data in the future.
Secure cloud storage is an essential tool in preventing data leaks
One of the reasons why leaked data is so dangerous is that anyone can read it and use its contents to do harm. But if your data is encrypted and safe in the cloud, it’s highly unlikely that anyone will be able to access it – and even if they do it’ll be incredibly difficult for them to decode it and make sense of the contents.
A secure cloud storage solution could be your company’s secret weapon in the fight against data loss. To learn more, browse our range of packages and find one that suits your personal or business needs.