As businesses move toward an electronic future, the disaster of losing or leaking files is just a click away. It’s estimated that businesses lost $1.7 trillion dollars last year from data loss, with an average of $10,000 per 1MB of data. And perhaps more costly than the direct financial impact of data loss is your clients’ irreparable loss of trust.
Fortunately, the practices of DLP (Data Loss Prevention) are improving every year, but you need to be proactive in the ongoing battle against data loss. If you go in with the best data management practices and the right DLP software, you can save your business from the potential disaster of major data loss. Here are 3 data management best practices you should implement now to immediately improve your DLP abilities:
1) Research & Identify
Setting up a DLP system can require a large portion of your company’s resources, so it goes without saying that the first thing you should do is a solid amount of research. Just by reading this article, you’ve already begun step one. But what other areas do you need to research?
The first thing you should research is what areas data loss could most affect your company. Depending on the type of data you have and where it lives, you may not need to cover all of it with a DLP software. Determine what type of data your business can’t exist without, which data would be most damaging to lose, and where all of this data lives in order to decide where you’ll need to invest in DLP. Make a note of data that your company uses daily, data that is under regulatory protections (ie: consumer credit card data and ePHI), and any other data that is integral to the sound operation of your company. It’s a good idea to hire an outside consultant to help you with this so you’re certain nothing has been overlooked.
After that, it’s time to research what sort of DLP to use. Compare what different DLP solutions offer and which is the best fit for your company. Shop around rather than grabbing the first one you see, because they are not one size fits all. It’s helpful to discuss data management practices with owners of similar businesses to find out what works and what doesn’t for them.
2) Install DLP Software
DLP solutions come in all shapes and sizes. They all backup your data, but they can do so through software, hardware, or cloud-based functions. Software can be corrupted along with your system. Hardware can be physically damaged. However, good cloud-based backup systems are always there for you across all your platforms and locations, without being vulnerable to physical threats.
Cloud-based backup is the strongest trend in DLP and using it has shown to be the best data management practice. This is why all the big names in tech (Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) have been pushing cloud backup across their systems for years. It’s the easiest to use, it’s the least intrusive, and it simply works best.
To ensure your DLP is thoroughly strengthened, make sure your cloud backup provider’s plans accommodate all of your backup needs, including:
- Automatic, continuous backup of recently changed and created files
- Unlimited previous file version history retention
- Unlimited device storage supporting multiple device types (Mac, PC, NAS devices, etc)
- Military-grade encryption
- And more
For free access to these features, try Nordic Backup free for 30 days. Or, if you need a more robust lineup of zero-downtime data loss recovery options, try Server Pro free for 30 days.
3) Continue To Monitor And Adjust Your DLP Strategy
Your DLP strategy is not a fire and forget mechanism. You or someone at your company needs to continue to monitor the process to make sure it continues to work effectively, as it is the only thing protecting your business from major data loss.
Your first priority needs to be making sure that confidential data is kept confidential. Backing up your data to a cloud system so it can be recovered no matter what the disaster is vital, but it also does mean data like your client’s personal information and credit card numbers are now being kept in at least one more place.
Make sure those files are kept confidential and make sure the people monitoring your DLP system have access to see data loss events, but don’t have access to the data itself. Your data and your encryption key to unlock it should only ever be known by you.
In Short
As we become more reliant on technology to get us through the work day, it’s easy to forget it’s vulnerabilities. However, data loss is only one bad click or data loss event away. Electronics malfunction, break, get stolen, and employees make mistakes. If you use the best data management practices mentioned here, you can be sure that a simple data loss event won’t sink your company.
