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Did you know the average cost of a data breach in 2021 is $4.24 Million? Too many organizations are unprepared, and could fall victim to a ransomware attack or data leak at any time.

In this article, we discuss the top 5 ways you can protect your business from a data breach.

Why should you care about data security

Your company data includes sensitive information such as user credentials and passwords for the clients you serve. As an MSP, you have a responsibility to your customers to protect their data.

There are also regulations in place to protect your clients. If you are unable to meet these regulations you may be fined or sued.

The average cost of a data breach today is currently at $4.24 Million, a 10 percent rise compared since 2020.

Access Controls

It’s important to have control over an organization’s users so that each employee only has access to essential data. A CEO and an Account Executive should have vastly different permissions.

Implementing access controls can severely lower your risk of experiencing an internal security breach.

Some common access control practices include:

• Role-based access: based by role in the company
• Data-centric access: based on the type of data that is being accessed
• Context-centric access: based on factors such as time of day you are trying to access or location 

Monitor your data

Another step in protecting your data is to monitor and track where data is traveling and who is using/sending it.

From a security standpoint, implementing a data management system is going to protect your company from any unknown data breaches, as well as act as a deterrent by letting workers know their data is being monitored.

It’s going to also help organizations against high regulation fees in the event of a data breach by showing that you’re not neglecting data and you have taken the right steps in order to monitor sensitive data.

Password Management 

One of your most important forms of data is your credentials. Your credentials are what is used to access your everyday resources such as gmail, active directory, or servers.

If a bad actor is able to get a hold of user credentials, they are also able to get a hold of whatever that user was able to access. 

Credentials being your most important form of data makes it the most sought after forms as data as well, as 81% of data breaches in 2021 were caused by poor password management.

In order to protect your passwords as a company you should implement added security features and policies such as requiring Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), or requiring passwords to be changed frequently for higher up personnel.

Endpoint protection

The next step in preventing a data breach is to implement an endpoint protection system to prevent outside bad actors from getting in.

Endpoint protection is also going to prevent workers from becoming an accidental inside bad actor by stopping most common cyber attacks such as phishing, malware and social engineering attacks.

Endpoint security is going to give you the ability to block, analyze and contain an attack before it has a larger impact on your organization.

It will also give you the ability to filter what content your workers can see and access, something that is very important in keeping attackers out of your company.

Encryption 

Encryption is going to act as your company’s last line of defense in the event of an outside or inside threat surpassing any of your other security measures.

If your company was to be attacked by a ransomware attack that successfully maneuvered around your end protection, encryption is what’s going to prevent these attackers from leaking your sensitive data.

Although encryption is a very useful tool it can also hinder day to day processes. This is why we suggest using an encryption tool that also also capable of setting access controls.

Actifile

Implementing these processes are not easy, and finding a solution that handles multiple of these needed steps is next to impossible to find – that’s where Actifile comes in.

Actifile is our data risk remediation tool. Not only does Actfile give you the ability to encrypt and protect data, it also gives you the ability to monitor where data is going while also giving you the ability to set access controls easily through our guided user interface.

Ready for a demo? Click here to book a 15 minute call to learn about Actifile.