How to Safeguard Corporate Secrets : 4 Tips to Avoid Data Theft or Loss

One of the things that any size corporation cannot afford is to lose data. This could be HR information, payroll data, documents containing proprietary information, security logins, or something else.

Safeguarding from theft or loss is paramount to prevent intellectual property from falling into the wrong hands or a corporate insider sharing confidential information with a third party. Here are 4 tips to avoid security issues with data.

Avoid Using Older Software for Critical Activities

Older software, especially when used for highly confidential activities such as payroll set-up and processing, can open the door to data theft.

Security procedures with aging software can be thwarted because vulnerabilities are already well documented online. This can lead to improper access by employees with bad intentions or data being accessible online due to poor security protocols.

A cloud solution for payroll is far safer. Multi-level security procedures can be implemented to prevent improper access either through a laptop or smartphone.

Update Software Promptly

Both operating systems and software apps need to be regularly updated or patched to the latest version.

While some software upgrades provide new features or tweak existing ones, many are security-related. Some patches fix security vulnerabilities discovered by security researchers and patched before the vulnerability became more widely known.

It’s fair to say that patch management is a tricky thing. Some patches can go wrong and need rolling back. As such, there is an argument for companies to delay patching systems to let things ‘play out a little.’ However, this does potentially leave software vulnerable. Each IT department must decide where its highest priority lies.

Using cloud solutions that are sometimes updated daily avoids the moral quandary of whether to update or delay it. The responsibility then falls on the software provider to ensure they don’t roll out an update before it’s fully tested.

Give All Employees Training on Security

Data breaches and data loss often happen due to the weakest link. Unfortunately, this is typically one of the employees who suffer from a successful social engineering approach.

Social engineering is when a hacker will indicate that they’re trusted by misrepresenting themselves as someone else. They may contact the company to gather the information they can use on the phone or email later to gain trust.

Subsequent follow-ups via emails and attachments provide a way to install malicious software onto the company’s network.

Providing training on the various ways that hackers successfully gain access to computer systems, with a focus on employee security measures, can prevent network intrusions and data theft.

Use Better Passwords

Passwords are a difficult one for companies and employees alike. When they’re easy to remember, they’re quicker to crack using a random password generator. However, when they’re too complex, employees cannot remember them.

The best thing to do is to use a password manager like LastPass to store the passwords for each employee. These can be controlled via an administrative account, as needed. The employees can log into websites, including SaaS services, by using their master password in the password manager.

By using a variety of methods to keep payroll, financial planning, product design, and other information secure, companies avoid a huge setback. Also, should a data breach include customer data, there is the accompanying need to declare the intrusion. This will cause brand reputational damage that is hard to recover from.