Negosentro|Tips For Organizing And Protecting Business Data | Data breaches can have serious consequences for an organization or business. The threat that criminals and computer hackers pose is widely documented. Consequently, proprietary data are highly sought by both good guys and bad guys, which means organizations need to put in place basic protective measures to secure their data. Having a legal counsel is vital as it ensures you put in place robust data security measures.
Why You Need a Data Security Plan
The aim of having a data security plan is to address demands and responses to data requests by government authorities. A good plan identifies a single individual in the organization who is in charge of responding to data demands by the government. In most cases, the person responsible for addressing data demands should be the institution’s lawyer. All such data demand should be in the form of court-issued warrants, and every demand is carefully reviewed to ensure accuracy. The organization exercises all right of appeal and review to the requested data if the data is highly sensitive such as customer information or proprietary information. The data auditing and monitoring can be done using redshift audit logging.
Encrypt your data
The data security plan needs strong encryption for all sensitive data. The encryption should be 128 or 256-bit cyphers. All data should be communicated and stored in encrypted form. If the organization is using an external party for storage, ensure the data is first encrypted before you pass it to the third party even if that third party is offering encryption service. NSA and law enforcement authorities are requiring data providers to give them encryption keys that can decrypt targeted data. Therefore, use your own encryption system to secure your data so you’re not relying on service providers.
Communicate in a secure channel
All data should be communicated through a secure channel to protect their sensitive nature. Don’t use the conventional internet-based email. The aim is to make it difficult to access the message content. Encrypt and re-encrypt multiple times the individual messages by computers in the process of transmitting sensitive data to the destination.
Use firewalls and access controls
Access controls should have measures like authentication requirements and passwords. Plus, you can add biometric systems or engage multiple authentication systems. Data security practices and policies should factor in the effectiveness of the use of authentication systems the organization is using like passwords. Passwords are dependent on how to authorize users to conduct themselves. If a single user loses control of the password, the whole network and data handling are compromised. Therefore put in place a firewall to manage access to primary or core data networks from any mobile device or internet.
Carefully select your external service providers.
Data security procedures and policies for use with outside parties for either communication, storage, or processing functions should be in place. The plans should factor in situations under which the third-party service provider is used and what kind of data they process. Ensure all data security measures are adequate and meet your organization’s data security plan and follow the regulatory and legal requirements for that particular data.
Review all performance records in advance. Consequently, review term off service and your service agreements with third-party to ensure it includes enforceable provisions relating to vital data security topics. The critical issues can cover how to handle security breaches, a description of security level commitments, and security measures. Notice can be issued if a breach takes place and demand for full disclosure by the government. What kind of process exists for handling any outages? What ownership rights exists to those stored data? These are crucial questions.
Store some data off your network
Identify the sensitive data that should be stored off the network and not accessible on the computers with internet access or any other computer network. Highly sensitive data should be stored away from computers, which can be remotely accessed for security reasons.
Bottomline
Critical data is under constant threat by malicious malware, criminals, and government agencies. Data security breaches can devastate an organization and affect your strategic planning or risk management analysis. Using legal counsel is crucial as lawyers play a significant role in planning, analyzing the data, and securing the infrastructure and network system.
