Data is the lifeblood of the modern business.

Without access to stored data, businesses would be unable to operate and would soon grind to a halt. Worse still, data breaches could destroy customer confidence and even land you in legal hot water. That’s why it’s so vital to have robust data protection measures in place to safeguard your business information.

Protecting your business data might seem intimidating, so let’s start with the basics.

Here are three business data protection strategies you need to implement.

1. Implement Backups

One of the most important things you can do to protect your business data is to implement a reliable backup and recovery strategy. This way, if your data is ever lost or corrupted, you’ll be able to restore it from a backup.

There are a couple of different ways you can go about backing up your data. One is to use an on-site backup solution, which involves storing your backups on a separate piece of hardware located on-site. This is a good option if you have sensitive data that you don’t want to entrust to a third-party service, but it’s vulnerable to a physical disaster like a fire or flood.

Another option is to use a cloud-based backup service. This is a good choice if you want to be able to access your backups from anywhere in the world or if you have a large amount of data to back up.

2. Encrypt Your Data

Another essential way to protect your business data is to encrypt it. This means that even if someone does manage to get their hands on your data, they won’t be able to read it unless they can decrypt it.

There are many ways you can encrypt your data, with a range of commercial solutions that offer different levels of security. You’ll need to weigh up the security vs. convenience trade-off to decide which encryption method is right for you.

You’ll need to pay special attention to any data that needs to go off-site, like tablets, laptops, and USB drives. There are hundreds of stories of people losing these devices, and customer data with them — so you need to ensure that the data on them is properly encrypted.

3. Develop Data Protection Policies

The human element is one of the biggest points of failure in any cybersecurity framework. This is why it’s so important to have strict data protection policies in place and to make sure that all of your employees are aware of and comply with these policies.

Some of the things you should include in your data protection policy are:

  • Restrictions on who can access certain data
  • Instructions on how to handle sensitive data
  • Clear disaster response and recovery plan

Policies like these are vital for crisis management, too. Having procedures in place means your team can respond with confidence to data loss scenarios.

The Business Data Protection Strategies You Need Today

Protecting your data should be a top priority for any business. By using these business data protection strategies and formulating other data security solutions, you’re on the way to protecting your business and your customers.

Do you need support with developing your data protection? Find out how our managed services can help.