How to prevent data breaching in an organisation

Startups are more prone to data breaching. The vast majority of data breaches come from human error and social engineering.

The single most effective way to protect yourself from a data breach is through Security Awareness Training. Here are some specific security tips to avoid data breaching:

Don’t click on anything suspicious or any type of attachment you are not expecting. These types of attachments contain malicious trojans and viruses that send data remotely to their servers.

Hover over a link to make sure it is a valid link. Look for https:// instead of http:// in URL.

Backup your data. Use multiple forms of backup as backup often fail. Test the restore function and make sure it works.

Train your employees on security awareness. Not everyone is an IT expert, so in order to secure your organisation’s data, cyber security awareness sessions should be conducted by the organisation.

Don’t pick up any stray USB’s and don’t plug them in. As these types of USB’s can run background process as soon as they are plugged in. So avoid using them.

Use a password tool to protect your passwords. Mostly password tools use an encrypted password to protect files and folders. Not only they are hard to crack but also introduces another level of security to the files and folders.

Avoid using free WIFI for your work. When someone uses wifi, they put themselves in their network, and anyone in that network can monitor network traffic and decode or re-route.

Use a good antivirus and built-in firewall for systems.

A simple and easy solution that won’t break the bank for start-ups is to store their data on a cloud solution that incorporates data-centric security as opposed to application-level security, meaning that security measures are embedded in the data itself as opposed to focusing all protective measures on infrastructure.

In the scenario of a data breach, and if documents are enabled with data-centric security, access to those files can be revoked remotely.