5 Ways to Make Your Business Data Secure

5 Ways to Make Your Business Data Secure 5 Ways to Make Your Business Data Secure Image Source: Unsplash.com -- Photography: Luis LlerenaWERE living in an increasingly data-driven world, where protecting your business data has become synonymous with safeguarding the future of your company.Actually, data has always been central to business. As well as statistics, data are the things that found the basis for calculation, reason and strategy.For instance, Coca-Cola’s crucial data is the secret recipe of its world-conquering soft drink. For a news media organisation, data are the facts and statements gathered by its reporters and researchers.What has become more crucial in the IT era is security. So much of what happens in business is bound up with the ever evolving, ever accelerating changes propelled by and geared towards the Internet, social networks and mobile comms tech.In the past 20 years, Internet usage has grown from one percent of the world’s population (1995) to 40 percent. That’s 3.4bn users and counting.This is a huge total of people simultaneously searching for information, for business or pleasure, making it paramount for businesses to keep crucial data such as customer databases, safe from unauthorised access.Here are five steps that you should be taking today in order to keep your business data secure.1. Get Organised With Your Business DataYOU will probably need to undertake an audit of your organisation to identify the data that you need to secure. Organised, systematic records will be required.This takes diligence and hard work, and sometimes businesses will engage a database administrator to conduct it for them.Either way, not only will knowing what data you have help you to devise a security plan, it is also a convenient resource when monitoring your data, allowing you to raise a red flag more quickly if something goes missing.2. Choose Appropriate SecurityONLY after you have gained comprehensive knowledge of your dataâ€"and preferably a future-proofed awareness of what you might need or amass in time to comeâ€"can yo u decide on the appropriate data protection.This will entail devising a precise fit for the kind of data that you have, and may well be something that you will engage a database administrator to carry out for you.Among the kind of decisions you will have to make is the level of IT/server security, and whether you need to invest in physical security on-site. A thorough knowledge of your business, existing data storage and future requirements is a big help.In the latter area, there’s a particular advantage in engaging specialist DBAs for their expertise on infrastructure and storage that’s appropriate to projected business activity.3. Always Back-Up!BACKING-up is the biggest no-brainer in business data and IT. But failure to do it regularly is the scourge of personal users whose computers unexpectedly break down or get stolen.In business, the IT devices you use for your operations contain important data. Given the attractiveness of smartphones and tablets to opportunistic thieves, you’d be well advised not only to to ensure the business information on these devices is secure, but also to back it up regularly.There are a number of options available, from storage on a flash-drive or portable hard drive, to password-protected cloud storage, though the most secure option will be a specialist provider that can  keep the  data safe, and ensure it can be recovered when you need it.Depending on the size of your operation, data back-up is a time-consuming process that many firms outsource while focusing on the important work of business development.Viatel, which focuses on enterprise network  solutions in the Irish enterprise sector, offers back-up services that guarantee “your data is reliably moved from Point A to Point B” and is regularly tested to ensure it can be recovered at any time.4. Continually Monitor Data Know Who Has AccessDECIDING on a business data protection plan is only part of the story. It’s absolutely essential that you continually monito r it, ensure that it has not been compromised, and keep a rigorous check on who has access to the data.If you always have one eye on your data, you will notice any irregularities much more quickly, and be able to tackle and lock down any of the major problems that can arise when they’re not spotted at an early stage.Stay in control of who accesses data by frequently changing not only security passwords but also storage locations. Don’t be complacent.5. Physical SecurityKEEPING your hardware secure is vital. A thriving business will have a reasonably large IT inventory, and if this is either stolen or damaged, it will be prohibitively expensive to replace.Recent developments such as tracking devices are great, low-cost hardware security options if your business is at too early a stage to consider the physical presence of security guards or sophisticated IT options.At any point, though, never underestimate the requirement to keep your business data IT system secure from unauthoris ed use.