As we have mentioned above, the risks of insufficient data protection are many and varied. The biggest risk is that your company may be hacked. Hackers always look for the easiest victim and if your company is not prepared to deal with such an attack, you may be the one to suffer.
A small business or startup may not think it has much to lose, but even the smallest of companies have a lot of valuable data that can be stolen.
Types of Data to Protect
Here are some of the most important types of data to protect:
1.Proprietary information
If a hacker gets ahold of your proprietary information, they can create a product or service similar to yours and undercut your business. This is one of the most common ways businesses go out of business – it’s not that their products fail, it’s just that someone else creates a similar product and offers it for less money.
Can steal your product identity.
If a hacker gets ahold of your proprietary information, they can create a product or service similar to yours and undercut your business. This is one of the most common ways businesses go out of business – it’s not that their products fail, it’s just that someone else creates a similar product and offers it for less money.
2.Intellectual property
This could include software code or other proprietary information. Even if you choose not to patent your work, protecting it in other ways by keeping it secret (think Coca-Cola’s formula) protects you from copycats and competitors alike.
Sets you aside from competitors.
This could include software code or other proprietary information. Even if you choose not to patent your work, protecting it in other ways by keeping it secret (think Coca-Cola’s formula) protects you from copycats and competitors alike.
3.Confidential client/customer data
You want to protect any client information, but you also want to protect anything confidential about your customers.
For example, if one customer gets referral by another customer, they may not want that info published since they are getting a special deal. So you need to keep that info confidential as well as any emails from them containing personal information (such as email addresses) which should be deleted after reading rather than kept for future reference).
Protecting what is confidential.
You want to protect any client information, but you also want to protect anything confidential about your customers.
4. Employee data
This could include medical information, social security numbers, and other personal information. While you might want to just delete or change employee information. For example, when they leave your company to protect their privacy, some laws require such info to stay on file for certain periods. So your best bet is to secure it in a way that keeps it confidential.
5. Financial data
If your company handles financial transactions or has a lot of sensitive financial data, you need to make sure it is safe and secure. You should never store credit card numbers or other financial information in plain text anywhere on your servers – even if you are using HTTPS (which encrypts the info as it travels from the site visitor to your server), someone could get a hold of the info and use it for their means. If you want to securely store credit card information, you need to use some sort of encryption.
