August 2, 2024 | By christa

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Data Breaches and Data Privacy: Keeping Your Information Safe

• Data Breach

Cybercriminals view your company’s confidential data as a goldmine. Employee SSNs, medical records, and bank statements are just a few examples of information stolen and then sold to unauthorized individuals during a data breach. Stolen information can also be used to initiate a campaign of extortion against you and your company. The costs of time, money, and image resulting from a data breach weigh heavily on affected companies.

A 2023 Identity Theft Resource Center impact report states that there’s been an overall increase in cyberattacks against small businesses, with 73% of SMB owners or leaders reporting a data breach that year. Of those respondents, 85% stated they were prepared to properly respond to a cyberattack.

There are precautions you can take to prevent a data breach from happening, ensuring the protection of the data you are trusted with to keep business operations running smoothly.

Provide Employee Cybersecurity Training

95% of traceable cybersecurity issues are a result of human error. Cybercriminals will try to take advantage of those unable to detect common digital schemes, posing as a higherup in your company urgently requesting log in information from unsuspecting employees.

Cybersecurity training should be a requirement for any SMB. Basic takeaways applicable to any industry include but are not limited to:

• Best practices for creating and protecting passwords

• What correspondence with the company’s IT provider looks like

• How to detect phishing attempts

Backup Your Data

Gone are the days of organizing filing cabinets– virtually every modern business uses some kind of cloud service. But using a cloud without backing up its data on a regular basis is a risky move that data breachers will absolutely extort.

A data backup involves copying your data from its primary location into a secondary location. This may be another cloud or some kind of external hard drive.

Power outages, system overloads, and ransomware alike can compromise your main cloud. Human error also does its fair share of damage – we all know the panic that an accidental mis-click can bring. Backing up your data gives you peace of mind that all your business’s sensitive information will stay intact through any scenario.

Know How Your IT Provider Is Using Your Data

This is why reading the fine print is important. While your IT service provider is expected to collect some of your business’s data, problems arise if they push the boundaries of what that data should be used for.

Make sure you know how your provider – prospective or current – manages your data, especially upon termination of your contract with them. Do they delete it from their servers entirely? If they do keep it, then what is their reason for doing so?

If a prospective IT service provider gets defensive over or avoids questions regarding their use of your data, take the sign and look for an alternate provider.

Today’s world requires us to constantly be connected to each other through technology. Taking steps to protect your SMB’s classified information not only keeps you, your employees, and your clients safe, but also reflects well on how your company is perceived. Folks who want the best for themselves do the same to whoever they provide goods and services for.

LeadingIT is a cyber-resilient technology and cybersecurity support provider. With our concierge support model, we provide customized solutions to meet the unique needs of nonprofits, schools, manufacturers, accounting firms, government agencies, and law offices with 20-200 employees in the Chicagoland area. Our team of experts solves the unsolvable while helping our clients leverage technology to achieve their business goals, ensuring the highest level of security and reliability.