Data is one of the most important resources for a modern business. Companies rely on their data for analytics, finance, creation, progress, and ultimately, success. This means that data is a valuable resource, not just to your business — but also to any cybercriminals lurking.

If you’re not looking after your data carefully, you could fall victim to a cyber attack, or face litigation from regulatory non-compliance — especially if you are handling personal sensitive client data. As a business, you are responsible for looking after your data, and especially your client’s information.

In this article, we’ll discuss why data security is so important, the risks and dangers that occur with irresponsible handling, and ways to ensure your business is handling data securely and ethically.

The Importance of Data Security

One of the most important parts of managing a business is ensuring your security is robust and reliable. In a modern business age, this doesn’t just entail office or building security — it also requires online data security, and failing to keep your data security up-to-date could lead to serious consequences.

As a business, the data you hold digitally is vital. Your company may store documents, analytics, statistics, and more, including classified business secrets, financial information, and personal employee, client, and customer information all digitally or on the cloud. If this isn’t secure, you risk losing or releasing all of this data.

Ensuring your organisation’s data security is up-to-date is crucial in a modern business environment — without the right protocols, software, checks, and more, your company may be vulnerable to vicious cyberattacks.

Risks and Consequences of Data Breaches

A data breach is the act of unauthorised individuals accessing confidential, protected information. Data breaches have significant, devastating consequences, which are incredibly hard to recover from and can happen to businesses of any size.

If your business is involved in a data breach, you have a massive chance of experiencing irreparable damage to your reputation, causing a loss of customers, clients, and overall revenue. You might experience legal and compliance issues surrounding your leaked data — and if any personal information is gained, this could lead to a loss of privacy, or worse, identity theft.

Your database could also become permanently damaged or corrupted, losing all of your business data, files, and information permanently. Data breaches can be fatal to companies, and many data breaches in the past have led to companies closing for good.

It is difficult to repair the damage done to your business after a data breach — which is why it’s vital to ensure that you have the correct data security measures to prevent cyberattacks from occurring.

Legal and Ethical Responsibilities

As an organisation, you have a legal responsibility to handle sensitive data securely — however, it is also vital to handle sensitive data ethically. Businesses that practice data ethics not only protect themselves from legal issues but also protect their customers’ safety and information.

Here are a few ways you can practice data ethics:

  • Consent: You should never track a customer’s data without the appropriate consent. Whether it is a pop-up box with a checkmark or a policy written in terms and conditions, you must allow the user to decide whether their data can be collected.
  • Transparency: Be open about how your company plans to collect, store, and use personal data. Hiding or lying about data usage is unlawful, unethical, and unfair.
  • Privacy: Ensure all sensitive private information about customers is kept confidential, and kept in a secure database.
  • Intention: Assess your intention behind collecting the data. Ask yourself why you need it, if it’s necessary, how it will benefit you, and what you’ll achieve with it once analysed. Do not collect data if you have a negative intention or if it doesn’t benefit you.
  • Outcome: Consider the outcome of your analysis before you reach it. If you find it could potentially harm people despite the intention, consider what you could do differently.

Practical Steps for Data Protection

When monitoring your business security, it is important to have robust data security protocols and plans in place throughout your entire organisation, from protecting where data is stored to practising safe physical security in the workplace.

A practical step forward for data protection is to analyse your existing technological infrastructure — assess your security protocols, hardware and software, network speeds and connection, and conclude any underlying issues or much-needed upgrades that would benefit your business’s data security.

Another important step for protecting your company’s data is to practice safe security measures in the workplace. One of the biggest forms of data breaches is phishing attacks — ensuring your employees are educated on phishing scams, regularly updating their passwords, and using a form of MFA will ensure your business is protected.

Role of Managed Service Providers

It can be difficult to manage every aspect of your organisation’s data protection and digital security, especially if you require changes and upgrades to your infrastructure that you may not have the in-house resources to cover.

Luckily, Managed Service Providers (MSP) can help. By working alongside an MSP, you no longer have to worry about security and technology management, maintenance, and day-to-day tasks — their team of specialists will handle it for you.

MSPs can also ensure your infrastructure is up to date, building optimised plans for your company’s needs and objectives and assisting in any large technological upgrades, implementations, or migrations that you plan for your business.

How We Can Help

Security is a vital consideration for any company.  The risk of data breaches and attackers is too great to ignore, and failing to safeguard your client data can be catastrophic for your business all around. However, you can easily use these steps to ensure that your business has a great data security strategy.

If you’re looking for a helping hand in securing your business, reach out to us today. We’re here to help and will ensure that you have everything you need to make sure your business is covered in the long run.

Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.