7 Data Protection Tips for Small Businesses

Data protection is important for any business- big or small. As most business owners know, data breaches can cause huge losses and can even lead to the total ruin of a business.
Small businesses need to be very careful with safeguarding their business data and the personal data of their customers. With a limited budget at their disposal, small businesses might find it a bit difficult to go for high-end security measures and may even commit oversights that would leave data vulnerable. Yet there are some basic data protection tips that could help small businesses secure their data and the sensitive personal data of their customers. These include…

Ensuring and maintaining proper backup of data

Creating and maintaining a backup is vital for data security, for small companies as well as big ones. However, this is something that many entrepreneurs tend to be callous about. In fact, all businesses should pay proper attention to maintaining a backup of data and should update it regularly. Small businesses should update the backup daily, or at least weekly so that there is minimal loss of data even if there is a totally unexpected data breach. Well, data breaches are always, after all, unexpected! So, be prepared with a proper backup. Keeping a backup on cloud server is also advisable today as this makes it easy to retrieve data in case of a disaster that could destroy the hard drive or server where the backup is done.

Securing important data with Cryptography

Cryptography is of vital importance when information is stored and transmitted online. There are different methods of cryptography, depending on the business and its specific needs. The most common of these Is the Transport Layer Security/Secure Sockets Layer (TLS/SSL) encryption. TLS/SSL encryption is for ensuring that all data that’s transmitted through a website remains encrypted and hence private & totally secured.

Using security software

Security software, starting with firewalls, are important for data protection. Firewall protects systems/networks and the data therein from malicious intrusions that are intended to breach systems and data. A firewall monitors all inbound and outbound traffic and prevents malware from accessing the system/network. Similarly, it becomes necessary to use an antivirus software/endpoint security software, POS security software etc.

Limiting financial transactions to one or two systems

It’s always advisable to use just one (or maybe two) system(s) for conducting all the financial transactions of a small company. This system (systems) should better not be used for other online activities, not even for checking emails or surfing the social media. The slightest of negligence could lead to very great losses.

Ensure limited access to systems used for business transactions

It’s always good to ensure that only limited number of people, especially only those who are responsible for the financial transactions, have access to the computers that are used for business transactions.

Running virtual servers

Running virtual servers is not just cost-effective (which, of course, matters a lot for small businesses), it helps improve data security as well. It helps you run several virtual server environments on one device and thus helps data security and also helps recover work if any machine has a hardware failure.

Training employees on the basics of security

The best security for any company comes from its employees. Hence it becomes very important that every entrepreneur endeavors to educate his employees on the basics of security. A small mistake on the part of an employee can ruin a whole business. Therefore employees need to be trained on all aspects of security and also on how to tackle the situation in case a data breach occurs.