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Protecting your data and understanding how you recover from a data loss event is key for any IT department. Even the best security practices can’t anticipate every possibility. Here are four instances that are hard to protect your data against.
Hard Drive Error
HDDs are sophisticated mechanical pieces of hardware. They’re jammed full of moving parts, and while they’re reliable day-to-day, in the long term, there’s a chance of failure you can’t ignore. Even SSDs have a limit on how much they can write, so if you perform heavy writing operations on a daily basis, you should be ready for this event.
Accidental loss by human error or physical damage
All kinds of things can happen when data is exposed to a user. They might accidentally spill liquid on or otherwise damage a computer, or they could accidentally delete something important. Personal computer use may lead a user to consider the recycle bin a safety net, but they might also accidentally empty it or delete the data in one of many situations where the recycle bin doesn’t apply.
Data Loss by Cyberattack
Whether it’s an active, targeted attack where someone assaults and breaks into your system or a passive instance of an accidental malware infection, a cyberattack is responsible for a huge amount of data loss, these attacks could do everything from stealing and deleting your data, to encrypting it and holding it to ransom.
Physical Theft
The thief who swipes your laptop from the coffee shop as you go to the counter to pay probably isn’t interested in your data so much as they want the value of the hardware. But your data’s gone nonetheless, and you can't take the chance they won't scrape your passwords. Losing a computer to theft, targeted or opportunistic, means everything on that local hard drive is gone, and all passwords must be changed.
How to Protect Your Data From These Threats
Many data protection tactics have broad applicability. Whether you’re taking a step to prevent the loss from occurring or easing the pain, if it does, you do have to make and execute your plan now.
Take care of your hardware.
Encourage users to treat their workstations like they’re their own and report unusual clicking, overheating, and other concerns. If they work remotely, they have to handle their endpoint laptop like they would any kind of sensitive information. If it is stolen, they should change all their passwords as quickly as possible, as none of them can be considered safe.
If some data is particularly sensitive, also consider hard drive encryption as an additional security measure. This will help protect your data even if you do lose it, giving the attacker another tough layer of security to break.
Send Regular Security Reminders
Users can fall into bad habits. Remind them that password safety is paramount and keep them abreast of common cyberattack methods that try to trick them. You may want to run some tests to see how they respond to suspicious emails.
Use Surge Protectors and Backup Power Supplies
Power surges and unexpected outages can interfere with the integrity of the hardware. You can take strong steps to prevent these problems by putting contingencies in place and educating users on what to do.
Prepare to Protect Your Data through a Data Loss Event
Recovering from data loss generally comes down to one core thing: having a backup. There are different levels of sophistication available all the way up to completely restoring the old environment effortlessly in a new one but to recover from a data loss, you need the data.
If you’re using cloud services, you will want to understand what your service provider does to ensure seamless service in the event that there’s an issue on their end. When it comes to your local data, you’ll need to evaluate what gets backed up, how often, and in what formats based on your own risk factors.
Optimize Data Security: Expert Consulting for a Secure Business
A well-defined data protection plan can save you a lot of disaster. By implementing automated cloud backups and considering physical backups, you'll be prepared for a wider range of threats. But true protection goes beyond storage. Develop a clear disaster recovery process, accounting for different scenarios, and rehearse it to ensure a calm and efficient response.
Need a little help planning your data protection plan? Our data security experts are here to help. Get a personalized consultation to ensure your data is safe.
If you’d like to find out how we help companies prevent and recover from disaster, you may also want to check out our page just for CSOs.
