Data leaks can cause a lot of damage, and you should not ignore the consequences on this breach. Thank goodness, there are many steps you can take to minimize destruction. Identifying the sources of leakages and bringing appropriate activities to stop these people is key. The first step is to inform your personnel about correct information managing. This will help ensure that your staff won’t accidentally talk about sensitive info with illegal people. Step 2 is always to monitor the details leaving your company. This will allow you to discover a data outflow sooner and limit destruction.
Data leaks can occur for most reasons, including accidental data loss or deliberate data exfiltration by negative employees. The amount of such mishaps has increased by simply 47% within the last two years, and the problem https://goodbyeworld.dev/how-to-prevent-data-leaks-and-data-loss/ continues to grow. To be able to prevent data leaks, you must understand how they happen, how they affect your business, and how you are able to prevent these people.
One of the most common causes of info leaks is normally poor cybersecurity measures. Online hackers can use different attack vectors, including scam scams, to steal information. Additionally , a infringement can occur if the device is usually lost or stolen. The most effective method of prevention is education. Everyone in your company must be aware of your risks of data leaks and take ideal steps to stop them. A very good rule of thumb is to limit access to personal data to authorized users.
5 tips Prevent Data Leakages
1. Identify critical data and information
Knowing where your sensitive and critical data is located is the first step to securing your network. If you don’t know where important data lives, then how can you best protect it? Businesses need to know how much data they have, where it is, and a universal data coding system to ensure sensitive data is clearly marked and understood by everyone in the organization. Consider utilizing data loss prevention software to protect the sensitive information within your network and help you identify any disruptions or leaks in your data.
2. Evaluate access and activity
Once you’ve effectively identified the sensitive data, then you must monitor and evaluate the access and activity associated with the data. Having visibility to discover, track, and monitor the data across your business in real-time provides a clear picture of your network and helps to prevent data leakage. In addition, having the ability to identify any anomalous behavior — such as granting secure access, copying or deleting information, or suspicious downloads — will help prevent data breaches well before they happen.
3. Monitor the security posture of vendors
When you work with vendors, their risks and vulnerabilities become your own. Before working with a vendor, it’s important to conduct a third-party risk assessment to identify and understand the kinds of risks associated with their business. From there, it’s your responsibility to monitor the vendors’ security posture to check for new risks or vulnerabilities. Cyber threats are changing every day as new technologies challenge cybersecurity efforts, and maintaining continuous compliance can be difficult for many vendors that don’t update their networks regularly. Therefore, it’s the responsibility of your organization to ensure compliance and a strong security posture while working with third-party vendors.
4. Protect all endpoints
An endpoint is any device that is connected to the last location, or ending point, of a data transfer. While this may sound self-explanatory, the increase of internet-connected devices has multiplied the number of endpoints making it much harder to protect all endpoints — especially with remote work spanning internationally. Every device connected to a network is now a security risk. So with that said, if a cybercriminal gains access to a device from poor endpoint security, they can easily migrate into the network.
Employee education is extremely important to prevent data leakage. Businesses must train their employees to understand the importance of endpoint security and how cybercriminals target employee negligence to break into secure networks (via phishing attacks, whaling attacks, etc.).
5. Utilize data encryption
Data encryption is when data is translated into another code or form, and only those with access to a decryption key or password can read it. Therefore, data encryption can prevent cybercriminals from easily reading sensitive data in the event of data leakage. It’s important to note that while data encryption is a useful tool in the event of a leakage, it shouldn’t be the only tool to prevent a full-blown breach. Organizations should use data encryption in tandem with the other best practices we’ve listed above.
\SecurityScorecard’s Security Ratings can help prevent data leakage by providing businesses with a clear and comprehensive view into their security posture. This means you’ll have complete access to network and system vulnerabilities, gaps in security, and possible ways of exfiltration, all from the perspective of a cybercriminal. Our easy-to-read security ratings are scored on an A-F scale and give you a complete understanding of how your organization can best protect against data leakage and a data breach. Request your free instant scorecard today and start taking control of the security posture for your business.