Now more than ever before, business leaders are wary of the possibility that someone might attempt to breach their company’s firewall, and access sensitive business information. No matter the industry, no matter the competitiveness of the niche, and no matter if you’re running a small business or a global venture, it’s imperative to keep evolving your cybersecurity strategy in order to prevent a data breach and stay safe online.

After all, it only takes one successful cyber-attack to ruin your brand’s reputation, drive people away, and make you shut the doors of your company for good. Luckily, though, there are numerous effective countermeasures you can deploy to avoid and prevent such a crippling scenario. Here are the five cost-effective ways to improve data security and future-proof your business against cyber-attacks.

Improve password strength and use a password manager

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First and foremost, one of the most affordable solutions is to simply institute a new password policy in order to strengthen your access codes on every program and device in your company. Your employees should know how to create strong passwords without associating them with their birthdays, or the names of their pets. To achieve this, though, you might want to use password management software.

There are plenty of password managers on the market nowadays that can do all of the work for you, and keep your passwords neatly organized and protected against nefarious intent. Give popular software such as LastPass or Keeper a try in order to make password creation a breeze, and most importantly, prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Achieving this will also mean educating your employees.

Educate your employees on data security

Data security is not something you can simply introduce into your processes by installing new software or adding hardware firewalls (although these changes are important) – you also need to educate and train your employees on all matters relating to online safety and data security. After all, there is only so much technology can achieve on its own before one of your employees makes a mistake and allows a hacker to enter your system.

Start by conducting workshops with your teams on the basics of corporate data security. Pay special attention to the generation gap, and help older team members embrace innovative practices and concepts. Next, educate your employees on the new technology and software you’re bringing in, in order to complement the power of modern firewalls with proper employee conduct. This will prove invaluable in minimizing the risk of human error.

Migrate to a cloud IT architecture

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One of the most important changes you can make, one that you should make for a number of reasons aside from enhanced data security, is to migrate your data centers to a cloud-based platform. Not only is this a more cost-effective long-term solution when it comes to data management and scaling your data center as your company grows, but a good enterprise cloud solution that’s built on a hyper-converged infrastructure will also provide you with multi-dimension security protection. Enhanced security measures should include a cloud antivirus, a distributed firewall, and numerous other features such as security policies to ensure no cyber-attack can harm your company.

This will ensure that all sensitive business information is protected at all times, and that you always have the computing resources needed to grow your data center as your company evolves and your needs start to grow as a result.

Delete old accounts and profiles

Next, be sure to stay on top of your current and past employees and their accounts. One of the easiest ways people can get into your system is through an old employee profile that, even though the employee is no longer a part of your brand, has remained active. This is a management issue.

Don’t forget to delete employee accounts as soon as the exit interview is over, so that you can tie all loose ends and seal the backdoors to your company’s private information. While you’re at it, be sure to strengthen your security measures by enabling two-factor identification for all new employees and their accounts, in order to monitor and manage sign-ins to identify possible intrusions and act quickly.

Keep all software up to date

On a final note, don’t forget to update all of your software on a regular basis. This doesn’t just mean that you should update your firewall and operating systems, it means that you should update every piece of software you have on all stationary and portable devices, in order to enjoy the latest security builds and seal all possible entryways into your corporate data center, personal profiles, and other. If you’re running your business on a managed cloud platform, you can expect your provider to ensure all of the latest cybersecurity measures are in place.

Wrapping up

Ensuring top data security is a must nowadays, as the risk of cyber-attacks continues to grow with each passing year. With these security measures in mind, you can build an air-tight firewall around your company and future-proof your reputation for years to come.

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