Data is the lifeblood of every business, allowing businesses to operate efficiently and profitably. Companies must balance the need to have lots of data and the need to safeguard and secure customer data. The GDPR in Europe and California’s CCPA are driving this concern as are many long-standing laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and Securities and Exchange Commission rules which safeguard financial information of shareholders and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

To protect your data The first step is to categorize all your data and protect it. This means identifying and separating data according to its sensitivity level, and determining access levels. It is vital to put in place view it now policies that safeguard data whether it is in transit or in its rest. Using a tool to detect and monitor activities in the file and detect suspicious patterns can help you identify suspicious activity and quickly detect and eliminate vulnerabilities that could be a result of outdated or incorrectly configured software.

A complete backup and recovery plan that includes physical storage media is essential. In addition, it’s essential to ensure that security measures are effective, from background checks on potential hires and periodic training for existing employees to firing employees who do not need access to critical systems. In addition, it’s essential to create a disaster recovery plan to ensure that your data is safe in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.