Our Five Top Tips to Keep Your Data Safe
Data safety has been in the news a lot recently with high profile businesses such as Facebook and Google falling victim to data hackers. As a result, around 30 million account holder details were accessed because of flaws in Facebook’s code and a bug in Google+ API. This meant that third party app developers were able to access data of not only users, but also their friends.
So how can you protect your data from not only being accessed and harvested, but also from cyber viruses which can be devastating to your business? Same as you can today protect yourself from online frauds, using the online payments with the most innovative Fully-Verified account verification.
Here’s our top five tips to keep your data safe on and offline.
1.Schedule regular backups using the 3-2-1 backup rule. This is a great start to securing your data and backing up your files.
- Make 3 copies of data. Keep the original file and make 2 extra copies.
- Use 2 different types of media. It’s a good idea to store one on a hard drive and the others on external storage systems, such as a removeable data stick.
- Store 1 offsite. There’s still a risk of more than one copy being wiped out if they are stored in the same place. Therefore, it’s good practice to store a third copy in an offsite location, like the cloud.
2. Security Applications
- Antivirus: As the name suggests, a computer virus ‘infects’ computers with software designed to replicate itself by amending other computer programmes and inserting its own malicious coding. This can bring down systems and destroy or distort data by spreading from one computer to another. To prevent this from happening, we strongly advise that you install antivirus software on your computer and choose one that will continually scan for viruses (as they can attack at any time), rather than one that requires you to manually scan.
- Anti-Malware: Malware is also malicious software, but encompasses more than a virus because it also includes, computer worms, spyware, adware, ransomware, trojan horses, keyloggers and other malicious software. Malware is intentionally designed to cause damage to a computer, server or a network. Anti-malware software prevents, detects and repairs programming of such attacks. There is different anti-malware software available, but Malwarebytes is a next-generation for Windows antivirus replacement and the first of its kind for home users. It includes four independent technology modules: anti-malware, anti-rasomware, anti-exploit and malicious and fraudulent website protection.
- Updates to your servers and clients: Ensure that your servers and clients are updated to aid further protection against cyber attacks. Regular updates mean better security.
3. Secure your perimeter:
Simply put, don’t let anybody access your data who shouldn’t be able to! You can ensure your cyber safety which includes network security, wifi security and multi-factor authentication, by working with a company like WatchGuard.
4. Redundant Systems
- Duplicate servers – cloud or physical
Do you have a have a system ready to go in the event of a disaster? If not, we highly recommend that you do so if the worst happens, business will run as usual. A physical server could be located on your site or replicated elsewhere (subject to bandwidth and other’s requirements). A cloud server could be serviced through Microsoft Azure or located at Microcomms and leased. Not sure where to begin? Just give us a call and we’d be happy to talk it through with you.
5.Testing, Testing, Testing
- Regular testing of disaster recovery (DR) plans to ensure they work as expected
To ensure that you can recover as expected from a disaster, it is critical to test the plans and processes that have been put in place. By testing the DR setup regularly, you can test everything is working, should you ever need to use it. If you don’t have a DR plan in place, your data safety could be it risk. Microcomms can help you plan, set up and test your DR plan, ensuring you understand what processes to follow if/when the need arises.
If you have none or only some of the above in place, it’s definitely time to review your cyber safety and we can help you with that. Give us a call to discuss implementing regular health checks on your computers and systems by one of our skillful engineers. What’s more, book by end of November and we’ll do it for FREE (up to 5 systems), and we’ll include a recommendation of improvements to be carried out in December.
Don’t delay…get cyber safe today! Give us a call on 03300 020 000.
