When it comes to risk management in business, data protection is often neglected and undermined aspect. Today, we’ll shed some light on why it’s important and how you can develop your startup’s data security strategies. Read on.
In the digital age, a business’s most valuable asset is data. When a company has a running website, mobile app, or software, it’s easy to conclude that it’ll have a substantial amount of data to work with. This is especially true for startups who are heavily inclined to the field of Technology.
The Internet paved the way for endless possibilities but it comes with the price of lurking dangers. One must tread the online world carefully or risk being a victim of cyberattacks.
Data breaches, in particular, have become prevalent in the startup world in recent years. In 2020 alone, there had been several high-profile data breaches.
Tech giant Microsoft was one of the victims of a data breach where a security misconfiguration exposed over 250 million internal records. Fortunately, their engineers remediated the configuration before any real damage was done. But this slip-up is no isolated case. One wrong move can leave your company and your customers vulnerable to crimes like identity theft or fraud. Hence, strong data security is a must.
So, how do you go about securing valuable company information? This data protection guide will give you a better understanding of how data security works. Let’s begin with understanding the whole idea of data protection.
What is Data Protection?
Data protection is the concept of safeguarding confidential and sensitive information from unauthorized access and malicious cyberattacks. The term refers to both operational data backup and continuity/disaster recovery. Data protection strategies are designed to filter and manage data access, as well as create solid backups in case of an emergency.
Data Privacy Act
The US legislation doesn’t employ a single data protection law, instead, there are several laws enacted at the Federal and state levels. These provisions suggest several best practices and specify the rights of consumers and businesses. As a startup, you will need to abide by your local laws on data privacy. Also, you have to pay attention to the provisions that govern your industry.
Here are some of the mandated basic requirements for data privacy:
- Consent – Data use and collection should be done with the consent and awareness of users.
- Transparency – An organization should inform users of its data policy, rights, and confidentiality.
- Policy – All employees involved in a business transaction are required to know the data privacy practices of the organization.
Overall, these are just general terms you can follow for your business. You can find more specific details in the data privacy laws of your state.
Data Protection Measures
Through the years, information security practices have evolved to combat threats of an ever-expanding worldwide web. With most businesses turning to cloud platforms for data storage, the looming threats of data breaches have become more dangerous and complicated.
Fortunately, security software has also upped its game. Businesses, small and large alike, have invested a good chunk of their budget for extra security. Gartner predicts that information security spending will reach $123.8 billion in 2020.
But with all that said, early-stage startups still face the challenge of allocating enough budget for security. A lot of entrepreneurs grumble about not being able to afford such technology. This leads us to our next order of business: security spending.
Business Security: How much is it?
So, how much should you spend on data security? The answer depends on what kind of business you’re running. Large corporations are willing to shell out substantial amounts of money to safeguard their information. But if you’re running a smaller scope of business with simple transactions, it doesn’t have to be too complex or expensive.
The nature of your operations determines the extent of your security measures. For example, businesses that deal with highly sensitive information like banks would need extreme security measures. Likewise, healthcare-related businesses would need to ensure their patient’s data remains confidential and backed up.
However, if you’re running a straightforward transaction with customers, there’s no need for dramatic security measures (unless you want it). Let’s say you only have a website available, just make sure you’re employing all the necessary customer privacy practices and you’re good to go. Moreover, let’s learn more about these practices.
Data Security: How to Safeguard Information
As previously mentioned, the extent of your data security measures will depend on your business. Data protection is a broad field and the term itself is highly subjective. However, there are key principles you can focus on for your business.
1. Data Backup
One of the most effective data protection strategies is to have a backup for your files. Traditionally, data was manually and periodically copied through a tape drive or library, then retrieved when errors occur. However, that process gradually turned into a more dynamic function. These days, some technologies can back up, archive, and index data in one pass. This approach saves time and efficiently saves up long-term data storage.
Additionally, you can also organize cloud data backup to have a supplementary form of data storage.
2. Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery in the past focuses on data retrieval during emergencies, but nowadays it’s also merged with other strategies. It now goes hand-in-hand with the backup data through snapshots and replication. When a server fails, these processes allow for faster data recovery by sending the backup data to the primary storage. This process will give the failed server time to rebuild and replicate the storage. Once everything is in place and data has been duplicated and merged, operations go back to normal.
Build your Foundation
Data protection plays an important role in the success of your business. Many companies have failed and gone bankrupt due to unforeseen cyber attacks. It’s better to prepare for the worst than to deal with them as they come. More often than not, by the time you’ve discovered an attack, it’s already too late.
So, how do you set about creating a more secure platform? You start at the foundation. When you build your house on a rock, it won’t easily be shaken. In this case, you need your website or mobile app’s code to be solid and reliable.
At Full Scale, our software engineers pay careful attention to the details of website security. They take all the necessary precautions that come with good development ethics. Thoughtful code fares greatly in combating hacking attempts. So, start things off by hiring the right people to build your platform. Whether you need a reliable website, a powerful app, or an innovative software tool, Full Scale can help you out.
Full Scale is an offshore software development company that specializes in helping startups launch or upgrade their products. We have talented software developers, project managers, writers, designers, and QA specialists ready to be deployed to your team.
Want to learn more? Talk to us!
