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Keeping data secure is one of the key functions of the IT industry in enterprises. After all, a lot of important information is stored on-premises servers or in the cloud. Therefore, any data leakage, such as financials, can affect a business dramatically.
This problem is so drastic that, according to a survey by IBM with the Ponemon Institute,the data breach costs about R$ 1.24 million for national enterprises. Meanwhile, this cost rises to R$ 5.31 million in the Middle East and even R$ 7.91 million in the U.S.
Therefore, more and more institutions are observing this inherent characteristic of the current environment and investing to protect their information. So in this article, we’ll bring you some of the best practices that large companies are using to prevent data leakage and what your business can adopt. Check out!
Data leak in your company: how to avoid
Every IT team should implement some common actions that reduce the chances of hacker attackson the enterprise. Here we will cover seven of them that can be adopted in security policy in companies of various sizes.
1 – Train your employees
All computers in the institution can serve as a gateway for those who have bad intentions. After all, if a virus infects any of them, the entire network may be compromised. Therefore, it is important that both the machines used by managers and those used by employees are safe.
To achieve this result, it is important to make employees aware that some good usage practices are followed. Therefore, it is worth training them to identify fake emails, create secure passwords, identify necessary updates and other practices that prevent data leakage.
2 – Create a strong password policy
Although it seems obvious, several people still create very simple passwords for various services they use on the internet, such as a sequence of numbers, for example:12345678. In many cases, even personal data, such as dates of birth, are the basis of several passwords.
However, few remember that this data is easily found in some digital environments, such as social networks. This greatly facilitates the work of a hacker who wants to hack into an institution’s systems, because decrypting common code is simple.
This is a serious problem for enterprises that may suffer from data leakage because of a person who uses weak passwords. Therefore, it is important to encourage employees to create complex passwords with lowercase and uppercase letters, as well as numbers and symbols.
3 – Manage access to information
In some cases, the data leak happens due to someone who works at the company and already intends to steal information. And this employee can be outsourced, fixed or even a manager who has been in the business for years. Therefore, the IT team needs to be aware of this.
In this scenario, a good practice to avoid this problem is to limit the accesses of those who work in the enterprise. In this way, everyone can only access what is allowed, respecting what was stipulated according to the access levels.
This action prevents data leakage, since it is not possible to visualize everything that is in the company, but rather what is necessary to perform the functions themselves. Thus, the chances of malware infections, phishing and other crimes are reduced.
4 – Don’t forget to use antivirus and powerful firewalls
Not working with antivirus and firewalls is risking business and relying on luck not to suffer big problems. After all, both tools are essential to prevent hackers from accessing enterprise servers.
This is because the firewall is the software responsible for protecting the network when checking traffic accessed on the internet. Meanwhile, antivirus identifies and eliminates potential threats that may have entered systems and generate data leaks.
Computers usually already come with these active tools, but in an enterprise scenario it is important to work with external solutions. After all, not always what comes with the machine is the best solution. Therefore, having the support of something dedicated can be ideal.
5 – Perform audits for data security
The information security audit basically serves to evaluate the quality of protection systems in an enterprise. Thus, it evaluates how safe that institution is according to some pre-established criteria.
To this end, the auditing company does several processes, such as interviews with employees; vulnerability research, configuration analysis, network, data, etc. Having this type of help periodically is important to know if security policies are actually preventing data leakage.
6 – Give importance to encryption
Encryption is a process that turns information into code that can only be translated by someone who has proper access to it. That is, this technique basically hides what is in some content so that it is more protected.
Therefore, it acts as an extra protection layer for a given file. In the case of enterprise servers, encryption prevents data leakage because it makes it difficult for hackers who would need to decrypt the content to access it.
7 – Invest in a tool that realizes the security of applications
In addition to working with all these best practices, it is important to count tools recognized for excellence in data security. A good option for those working in markets of various segments is the bugScout®, security vulnerability detection platform.
With it, you’ll prevent data leakage by protecting your company’s information from application auditing. In addition, the solution also integrates with the DevOpslifecycle, facilitating constant analysis of source code and assisting developers in their security testing.
In addition, it is worth noting that bugScout® was designed by security auditors who developed the platform based on international security standards. Thus, bugScout® is at the forefront of many protection techniques by offering the lowest rate of false positives on the market. If you want to learn more about how the platform can help your business prevent data leakage, click here and request a free demo.
