5 Ways to Protect Your Critical Business Information

As businesses increase their digital capabilities and conduct more business over the internet, protecting business-critical data is becoming ever more important. Failure to adequately secure data within a network can significantly increase the risk of data loss, corruption, or theft, all of which can have negative financial consequences for the impacted business.

How Many Cyber Threats are There? Some Scary Statistics:

• 1 in 10 computers are infected with viruses each month.  
• 30% of computers are already infected with malware. 
• 29% of data losses are caused by accident.
• The global average cost of a data breach reached $4.24 million in 2021, according to the Cost of a Data Breach Report 2021 released by IBM and the Ponemon Institute. 

There are some frightening statistics out there, meaning that data protection is an essential part of all business strategies, for organisations of all sizes.  

What Are the Most Common Reasons for Data Compromise?

• Human Error: Inadvertent actions such as sending emails to the wrong recipient, loss of paperwork or mistakenly disclosing confidential information, is very common and can be detrimental for a business. 
• Theft or Loss of a Device: Physical theft or loss of a device leaves critical data extremely vulnerable. 
• Cyber Threats: Cyber-attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and new forms of attack are emerging every day resulting in compromise of businesses’ entire networks. 
• Weak Credentials: Predictable passwords and not enforcing security and access policies are major contributing factors to data compromise. 

5 Ways To Protect Your Critical Business Data

To minimise the risk of data compromise, we have outlined five essential data protection strategies that should be put in place to ensure that your critical data is kept safe. 

1. Knowledge is power! Knowing exactly what data is being stored, and where, is crucial. Understanding your organisation’s data landscape allows you to identify security risks and compliance requirements and make informed decisions about the measures needed to protect your data. Additionally, ensuring employees have knowledge of compliance regulations and best security practices is essential as insider threats are some of the biggest risks to data security. 
2. Essential encryption: Encryption has become essential to protect sensitive company data and secure customer information. With devices frequently being removed from the safety of company networks, due to remote working, encryption ensures that in case of theft or loss, sensitive data contained on these devices is inaccessible to outsiders. 
3.  Backup business-critical information: With business-critical data becoming increasingly digital, every organisation needs a reliable backup solution in place. Losing access to systems and data could be crippling to a business so having backup in place means that you can ensure business continuity if the worst happens.  However, cybercriminals are increasingly targeting business backups, so it’s essential to ensure that you update your backup solution regularly to ensure you have the best possible continual protection. 
4. Protection against external threats: Employing robust security measures such as firewalls, intrusion detection and zero-trust architecture, will help prevent data compromise from malicious attack such as ransomware and phishing scams.  
5. Disaster Recovery Plan: Having a disaster recovery plan in place will help reduce disruption to your business and assist with speedy business recovery in the event of a disaster, as well as minimise financial impact. 

Protect Your Vital Business Information 

Techbuyer partners with some of the world’s leading edge-to-cloud vendors including VMware and Veeam. Both software offerings provide enhanced security and access to cloud, edge or fog plus, robust backup.  

Industry-leading VMware as offered by Techbuyer allows your business to virtualise your existing IT systems and fully optimise your resources. It lets organisations’ physical servers host multiple virtual servers and share resources back to the physical server. As well as reduced costs and the prevention of unnecessary downtime, VMware provides improved IT efficiency and higher server availability. For more on Techbuyer’s VMware services and solutions, visit here. 

Veeam, meanwhile, is an industry-leading backup and data management system for cloud, virtual and Kubernetes and SaaS environments. Techbuyer is a Veeam Silver ProPartner and we can provide solutions that give you the confidence to quickly enhance your digital services and promote your business resilience, meaning your data is always safe and accessible be it on-premises, edge, fog or cloud. For more on Techbuyer’s Veeam services and solutions, visit here. 

With both VMware and Veeam, Techbuyer is your ideal choice to provide expert advice on robust security, backup, and data protection solutions for your business – ensuring your data is recoverable on your terms.  

For more information, please get in touch to speak to one of our experts.