Data breaches are on the rise, and many industry pundits forecast it will increase in the coming years. Cybercriminals are continuously becoming more thoughtful about hacking their target systems. So, how, as a Houston IT company, can you secure your client’s data? Here are some tips that would help.

Set Up Access Restrictions

All your staff may not need access to every little book and cranny of your company, so issue a divisional pass. Provide necessary access required for the position to each respective employee.

You can implement this idea in your internal networks too. You can protect them internally from one another using firewalls. This will make it much harder for cybercriminals to damage your business.

Let’s understand this with a simple example.

Imagine your backend as a herd of sheep. If you put up a big fence around your herd, all a wolf has to do is jump the fence to catch a sheep.

But, if you keep your sheep away from each other into smaller groups and fence them off, it would be a problematic situation for wolves as they have to cross a lot more fences.

Audit Your Systems

The best way to secure your company’s network is by auditing and putting pressure on it to see where the loopholes are.

You may take the help of an experienced Houston IT company that offers IT support services to conduct an audit for your business.

Also, do not forget to audit any third-party apps you use and figure out what those apps do with your client’s data. Remember, due diligence is the locksmith to your online security door.

Make Sure Your Plugins Are Always Updated

If you use plugins, make sure you keep updating them to reduce vulnerabilities and ensure consumer data protection from a breach by hackers. You may find this point quite evident, but it’s worth stating when you use WordPress, one of the largest CMS platforms, and the plugin vulnerability.

There are over 64 million websites that use WordPress, and 90% of all vulnerabilities from this application originate from plugins. That’s many potential websites and companies at risk by vulnerable or outdated plugins, so again, you need to have a strong focus on due diligence.

Focus on Patches, Firewall, and Encryption

If your network is not continuously updated, then it will be at risk. Also, most of the data breach happens when a patch exists. So go for automated software and patch assessment tools to keep your network up to date and identify malware automatically.

There are many types of firewalls out there. But the web application firewalls (WAF) work better to secure your client data against DDoS attacks. Plus, it provides customization options such as prohibiting traffic coming from users outside your delivery zone.

The next step to secure your client’s data should be encryption. It is the symbolic lock and key when safeguarding your customer data. Make sure that any sensitive data, regardless of where you transferred or stored it should be encrypted.

One example is an SSL certificate that encrypts personal data in the payment processing transaction. It can help safeguard your customer data, primarily if your business uses third-party apps for transaction processing.

It also depends on the SSL certificate type that you select to secure your website. All the SSLs provide the same encryption level, but the number of domains plays a crucial role in choosing an SSL certificate.

Train Your Employees Properly

We all make mistakes, so you cannot avoid human errors unless you have tools and measures to protect your customers’ data.

To ensure a mistake doesn’t include an intrusion on your company’s network or include a massive data breach, train your staff correctly to restrict and react to breaches or cyberattacks.

You can also implement a device control strategy to track what removable devices are used on your network. It will prevent data leakage. And even if a data leakage happens, you can easily find the source and stop the bleeding.

Prepare a Disaster Recovery Plan

If you don’t have a disaster recovery plan yet for your Houston IT company, you should consider creating one. And even if you do, make sure it has specific contingencies for a cyberattack.

So, do you’ve any questions?