Data Security Services: What They Include and How to Protect Your Business

Data security is a growing concern for many small and medium-sized businesses. These security solutions help keep your data safe from unauthorized access or data loss, but they can be difficult to implement. It’s a commitment to protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your data. Many security experts say that this is the last line of defense for your data, as well as your reputation, brand, and business. As you may have heard, there are many types of data protection services with different levels of security depending on your data volume, data sensitivity, and budget, but which security strategy should you choose?

What are Data Security Services?

 

Data security is a branch of computer science that includes securing data from unauthorized access or data loss. Data protection programs are often used to prevent data breaches, which can happen in many ways.

Data security services approach to security comes in various forms but typically includes data backup and storage. They can also be used to monitor data access and data leakage prevention programs (DLP). These services may vary by size of the company as well as geographic location.

 

Why is Data Security Important?

Your data is the lifeblood of your business. It’s what provides much-needed insight into how things are going, and it can even help you identify new opportunities to grow your company. Without data, an organization lacks a lot of important information about its own performance, which means that data security becomes more than just another IT task: it’s something that can help your business move forward or can bring your entire organization to its knees if you skimp on endpoint security.

 

Business data is stored on a computer, which means that data security becomes important when the risk of data loss or unauthorized access increases. Data protection programs are used to keep information secure from outside sources and protect it against advanced threats and cyber attacks.

 

What Does Data Security Include?

Data security includes providing employees with training on using these protective tools, such as data backup, a security program, data recovery, and antivirus software. Let’s take a look at a few more:

• Data Backups: Information is backed up to a physical or virtual location that has been verified as being secure from data loss. A backup can also be utilized if there are hardware failures within the computer system, such as a hard drive crash. When data needs to be recovered after an event, data can be restored from the backup, and all systems will resume normal operations.
• Data Recovery: Information is recovered from a data storage device, such as an external hard drive or tape library, when there are hardware failures within the computer system. Data recovery must use software that has been designed for data restoration after failure events, and it can take several hours or days for data to be restored.
• Antivirus Software: Antivirus software is designed to help identify and remove security threats such as viruses, spyware, malware, and other malicious code from a computer system before they can do any damage. This type of data protection could have the same benefits as data backup if there are hardware failures within the computer system.
• Internet Firewalls: An internet firewall is designed to protect data from unauthorized access on a network by limiting data communication between two networks. It can also restrict data transfer based on protocol, such as Web traffic or email traffic. An internet firewall could have the same benefits as backups if there are security alerts or hardware failures within the computer system.
• Patch Management Systems: When data is used within a network, it must be updated regularly to avoid breaches and other security risks that could lead to data loss or unauthorized access. A patch management system will identify what updates have been made by Microsoft for Windows systems and ensure they are installed before any attempt to use data on the system. A patch management data protection program could have the same benefits as a backup if there are hardware failures within the computer system.

Data Protection Benefits and Detriments for Small Businesses

Data security services can be a daunting and confusing topic for small businesses. However, data protection is an important issue to address in today’s changing world. What are some of the benefits that data security offers?

1. Data encryption: Encrypting data on devices with strong passwords helps protect data from being accessed by unauthorized personnel who find or steal data-containing devices.
2. Data backup: Ensuring data is backed up regularly can help prevent data loss due to hardware crashes, power outages, or natural disasters. Small businesses need to maintain two copies of data and store one offsite in the event of an emergency.
3. Strong passwords: Strong passwords are difficult to guess and provide data protection against unauthorized access.
4. Data sharing: This data security service is fairly new, but it’s a powerful tool for small businesses that want to share data with others within the company or outside of their organization without compromising data integrity.

 

Data Protection Negatives for Small Businesses

While data security needs to be a priority, it may not always be the best use of resources when you have limited funds or time.

1. Data encryption: Encrypting data on devices with strong passwords can add an additional layer of protection and make data more difficult to access if stolen. However, data encryption requires significant computing power, which can be costly.
2. Data backup: Backing data up to an external hard drive can help prevent data loss due to hardware crashes, power outages, or natural disasters. However, it will also require time and money for maintenance.
3. Strong passwords: Creating strong passwords is a hassle that takes time away from other tasks, so it may not be a good data security practice for small businesses.
4. Data sharing: This data protection service is a powerful tool, but it’s costly and can lead to data loss if not properly executed.
5. Money: Data protection programs are not free and must be purchased by a business. If the data is too extensive, it can cost thousands of dollars to protect all that data with these data protection programs.
6. Time: Data security can take a lot of time to maintain, and data recovery may be ineffective if it is not done properly.

 

Types of Data Security Services

There are many different types of data security for businesses, including data backup, data recovery, and antivirus software. The services offer different protections depending on your needs as well as the risks, data volume, and data sensitivity.

 

• Mobile data security: This can help prevent data theft from mobile devices and includes data encryption, data backup, privacy protection, identity management, and other protection methods.
• Cloud security protection services: These data protection tools protect sensitive data stored in the cloud or accessible via a browser. Many of these have an online dashboard, so you don’t need to download anything but data is protected in data centers that are not within your geographical location.
• Data protection software: This data security service provides data encryption methods and backups, but it may be too costly for small businesses with limited funds or time. These data tools can automate tasks like strong password creation and regular data backups.

 

Four Main Types of Data Breaches

 

 

1. Data exposure is when someone accidentally posts something that grants access to your information online without realizing it. An example would be posting an email with the company’s address on a message board such as Reddit or Twitter where anyone could see it.
2. Data modification occurs when someone alters data for malicious purposes. For example, if the data is a spreadsheet and someone changes one of the numbers in it.
3. Data destruction is when data is physically destroyed, such as by deleting files or reformatting an entire hard drive so that all data will be lost forever. But if you have read any of our previous articles about cloud services, hybrid cloud, and disaster recovery, you’d know to constantly back up your information in multiple places, so this won’t happen to you.
4. Finally, data theft occurs when unauthorized people access your company’s information without authorization to steal information or take data offline.

 

Steps to Keep Your Business Safe

The Data security services your business should implement are called the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) framework. US government agencies and security researchers created this to provide cybersecurity standards for organizations operating within the United States, which are critical infrastructures, national security systems, or high economic impact systems.

 

One of the main steps is data classification. This means that data should be classified to determine its sensitivity and criticality and what type of protection it needs. For example, financial data would need more security than an address list for customers who are no longer interested in your product. Protected data must also have access controls over how data is accessed, flows, and processed. These access controls are crucial because they allow holders to control who can see what types of data without authorization.

 

Endpoint security should also cover both physical security and network security to ensure that your company’s vital information remains safe regardless of where it is.

 

Wrapping Up

 

Data security services are crucial for any business that needs to maintain sensitive information, and there are many types of data breaches that can occur. To ensure your data remains safe in all cases, implement a robust defense strategy and action plan, which includes immediate ransomware response,  advanced platform defense, multi-factor authentication, AI-based cybersecurity solutions, continuous monitoring, and advanced threat monitoring to limit any potential vulnerabilities and privacy risks.

 

Install a data protection program with steps such as classifying the type of data you hold based on its sensitivity or criticality, implementing network controls so only data holders have secure access to resources without requesting permission, and creating physical security to protect data both on-site as well as in transit. You’ll also want to provide employees with additional security training so that you will have a strategic advantage over adversaries. Doing so will give you peace of mind and continuous protection over your data which is your business’s most valuable asset.