Protect Your Business Against Data Loss

With cyberattacks constantly making headlines, it may be easy to assume that your biggest threat for data loss will come in the form of a mysterious hacker. It’s a legitimate concern. Hacks are draining American companies financially to the tune of $100 billion a year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Yet, it’s more likely that your data loss could be caused by the employees right up under your nose — most of the time unintentionally. According to Data Defenders, a forensics and technology risk management service, employee behavior is responsible for 80 percent of security-related incidents.

Another study, performed by DeepSpar, shows that 38 percent of data loss situations are caused by hard drive failure.

Here are several steps you can take now to make sure you’re improving your plans to protect your business against data loss.

1. Set strong data encryption measures. Assess all employee equipment — desktops, laptops and mobile devices. Determine how you extensive your data protection plan should be, depending upon the inventory. With many employees now using their mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, to handle business tasks, it’s important that your encryption and security measures take into account devices that can be easily accessed by non-employees.
2. Develop a mobile device policy. Employees have been demanding the ability to use their mobile devices at work. Make sure that you establish a bring your own device (BYOD) policy that sets parameters on the company laptop, personal smartphone, or personal tablet and what type of activities are allowed on it.
3. Establish a backup plan. To ensure that your data is protected against a natural disaster, break-in, or other disruptive event, you need to develop a plan for storing data in another location as part of a backup plan. Many businesses seek out a location that is offsite to better prevent the likelihood of both locations suffering the same disruptive event.
4. Update often. Set a schedule that ensures that you’re backing up information regularly to avoid data loss.
5. Limit access. Not all employees should have equal access to data, even the ones who are all working in the IT department. Outline a plan for determining which employees should have access to the data on your network.

At Lifeline Data Centers, we help clients protect against data loss with colocation services that provide a high level of security. Contact us to find out how we can do the same for you.

Other resources:

• Infographic: The 22 Data Center Compliance Acronyms You Need to Know
• White Paper: Why Data Center Compartmentalization is Important
• Lifeline One Sheet: What You Need to Know About Lifeline Data Centers

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.