Just because your startup has a limited budget to work with, doesn’t mean that you don’t have the same security and privacy needs as any other brand. In an era where your reputation can be built or broken by the threats that gain access to your data centers, it’s important that you have a way to keep your information protected. Fortunately for today’s smaller businesses, you don’t necessarily have to spend a fortune on the latest security service to keep your data under wraps. The following three steps will help you to manage your infrastructure, without breaking the bank.
Create a Security Policy
The first step in any data management strategy is creating a data security policy. How are you going to identify the assets that you need to save and store, and the ones that you need to remove from your systems? How long are you going to hold onto your assets, and who will be responsible for checking that they’re up to date? What are your plans for Java logging, storing your data logs, and addressing the constant issue of GDPR when it comes to data analytics?
To create a comprehensive security policy, write down as many questions as you can about how you’re going to gather, store and use data, then look for ways to answer those questions with your security plan. For instance, if you’re worried about GDPR, you can put a system in place to avoid collecting any personal data without the approval of a customer.
Invest in Employee Training
Once you have a basic security policy to work with, you can begin to share it with your employees and colleagues in a comprehensive training plan. The policy that you have in place will let you know what kind of training your team members need. For instance, should they be aware of how to spot a phishing attack in their email, or do they need to know when to delete a file instead of storing it?
Training employees on the do’s and don’ts of managing and logging data can go a long way towards protecting your assets, your business, and reputation. Consider training options for everything from scam identification, to learning how to create a secure password.
Test Your System Regularly
Finally, the only way to be sure that your security system works is to put it to the test. Invest in regular vulnerability testing to help your team find the gaps in your strategy and consider working with third-party auditors too. Although paying someone to try and break through your security protections might seem counterintuitive at first, it’s much better to find out that something isn’t working this way, than it is to try and recover from an attack later.
Remember that at least you’ll be able to recover from an attack without losing any critical data or dealing with costly downtime. Regularly putting your security systems and employees to the test will make sure that you’re prepared for anything in this age of growing and ever-evolving cyber security threats.
