Top Data Security Practices for Modern Businesses in 2024

Regardless of the size of your business or how long it’s been running, protecting your business’s data should be one of your top priorities in 2024. Today’s cybersecurity threats are becoming much more complex and advanced, and your business needs to stay current and adaptable. Data security is no longer an option, and businesses will need to pivot to remain competitive and secure.

Read on to learn more about the most effective data security trends and best practices, and learn about some of the security measures, initiatives and technologies that form the cybersecurity landscape.

Let’s get into it so you can learn how to strengthen your cybersecurity posture and keep your business safe against the various threats that exist today.

Fundamental Data Security Best Practices

Table of Contents:

• Conducting Regular Security Audits and Assessments
• Employee Awareness Training
• Data Encryption
• Advanced Security Measures

Conducting regular security audits and assessments

Importance of Regular Audits

It is important to find and pinpoint cyber threats and vulnerabilities before they become a problem for your business. Regular cyber security audits and checks enable you to take initiatives that help you comply with regulations and maintain a strong stance on cyber security.

How to Conduct a Cybersecurity Audit

1. Define the scope and goals of your audit (which systems, apps, and components of your infrastructure to audit)
2. Select your assessment tools
3. Collect and look at your data
4. Perform an analysis of your data
5. Report on findings
6. Find Recommendations and address vulnerabilities

Employee Awareness Training

Role of Employees in Cyber Preparedness

Your employees are on the front lines of your business both online and in the physical world. Ensuring that your employees are aware of their actions and can recognize the signs of cyber threats (such as the symptoms of a phishing attack) is critical in keeping data secure.  Targeted awareness training empowers your employees to proactively defend your business and reduce the risks of the most common and damaging cyber threats.

Best Practices for Cybersecurity Awareness Training

• Cover Key Topics like phishing, password management, social engineering defense, and mobile device security.
• Create interactive and engaging content like simulations to make it more relatable and effective for your staff.
• Regularly update your content to keep it current with the latest trends and threats.
• Assess and provide feedback.
• Repeat this process on a regular/yearly basis to keep security on top of everyone’s minds.
• Encourage employees to lock their screens if they leave their desks.

Check out our previous article on cyber awareness training to learn more about its importance for every business today.

Data Encryption

Why Encryption is important for Data Protection

Encryption involves changing data into a format that is unreadable without a decryption key. This reinforces your data so that it cannot be viewed at without proper access and authorization. Encryption critically protects your business data relating to your customers, finances or intellectual property.

Types of Encryption :

• Symmetric Encryption: Uses a single key for encryption and decryption.
• Asymmetric Encryption: Uses one key for encryption (public key) and another key for decryption (private key). Often used for communications channels.
• End-to-End Encryption: Data is secured on the sender’s device and decrypted on the recipient’s device.

Advanced Security Measures

Zero Trust Architecture

What Is Zero Trust Architecture?

Never trust; always verify. That is the zero-trust motto. This mentality guards your business from both inside and outside threats to your networks and IT systems.

How To Implement Zero Trust?

• Determine assets and data to protect.
• Ensure you are using strong authentication methods such as multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Segment, isolate, and protect sensitive data.
• Continuously monitor and respond to threats.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Benefits of Multi-Factor Authentication

• Improve security
• Reduce the risk of unauthorized access
• Improve compliance

How to Implement Multi-Factor Authentication

• Secure critical systems first.
• Educate & train your employees on the importance of multi-factor authentication.
• Use intuitive, user-friendly MFA tools that can easily be adopted by most staff.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

Role of AI/ML in Cybersecurity

• Threat detection: Automation can effortlessly detect anomalies and unusual patterns to identify potential risks and threats
• Automated responses: Automatic responses can react to threats before your business notices them, reducing the time to resolve incidents.
• Predictive analytics: AI and ML can predict potential attacks by scanning available data and by looking at trends.

Examples of AI-Driven Cyber Security Solutions:

• Intrusion detection: AI-powered intrusion detection improves response times.
• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): pulls data from various sources to assess its security.
• Behavioural Analytics: AI is better at looking for anomalies and inconsistencies that may indicate a breach.

Take a look at Crowdstrike’s article for more on how machine learning is used in cybersecurity.

Commonly Known Data Security Compliance & Regulations

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

GDPR is a law on data protection and privacy for people living in the European Union. As defined by GDPR.EU, GDPR is “the toughest privacy and security law in the world. Though it was drafted and passed by the European Union (EU), it imposes obligations onto organizations globally, so long as they target or collect data related to people in the EU.”

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The CCPA establishes privacy rights and consumer protection for Californians in the United States. Cloudflare characterizes the CCPA as a “piece of data privacy legislation that applies to most businesses that process the personal data of California residents,” giving the people of California some more control over the personal data collected about them.

PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act)

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada defines PIPEDA as the “ground rules for how private-sector organizations collect, use, and disclose personal information in the course of for-profit commercial activities across Canada.” Following the principles of PIPEDA, your business will be able to build consumer trust both online and offline.

Read PIPEDA’s 10 guiding principles to learn more about the ground rules for collecting, storing, and disseminating private data.

Reasons to stay compliant with data security and privacy regulations:

• To avoid legal problems
• To increase consumer trust
• To reduce the chances of a data breach
• To ensure you are following best practices

Not staying compliant may lead to issues later on, such as identity theft, misuse of data, and reputational harm.

How To Remain Compliant:

1. Stay current with all of the local and global data protection laws that apply to your business.
2. Organize your data.
3. Implement advanced security measures (as mentioned above).
4. Consider using sovereign clouds that follow local laws and stay within a country
5. Conduct regular audits of your systems. Obtaining certifications helps you keep them up to date.
6. Employee Awareness Training.
7. Using monitoring and reporting tools that look at data access and usage.

For a closer look at data security and privacy compliance, head over to VMware’s article on why you should consider these, the benefits of boosting your data security, and the challenges and best practices to follow.

Incidence Response Planning

Why You Need an Incident Response Plan

Incident response plans are a must for businesses. The plan enables them to address a breach or attack and gives them a recovery guideline during the aftermath. Without preparing a plan, businesses may face longer periods of downtime, resulting in larger financial losses when they experience an incident.

Here are some quick reasons to ensure you have an incident response plan:

• Reduce the damage caused by security breaches and incidents.
• Help businesses meet compliance requirements.
• Promote consumer trust.
• Reduce potential downtime.

What Must Be Included in Every Incident Response Plan

1. Identification & classification: The first step is to understand the scope and nature of your incident or breach.
2. Containment: Next, you must take steps or follow a protocol to isolate the threat, provide immediate relief, and prevent further damage.
3. Eradication and System Clean-Up: Once the vulnerability or threat has been identified and isolated, you must remove the threat or reinforce the weak spot so no more harm can be done to your business.
4. Recovery: Once the threat has been eliminated, restore your systems and ensure everything is working as it should and remains as secure as possible.
5. Post-Incident Review: The last step is to conduct an analysis of the incident in retrospect and use the findings to come up with recommendations for future incident response efforts.

For a more comprehensive overview on how to respond to a cyber incident, please take a look at VMware’s guide on Cyber Attack Response: A Step by Step Guide.

Looking To Improve Your Data Security Practices and Incident Response Times?

A proper data security and incident response plan is critical for today’s digital era. By providing businesses with the frameworks and best practices they need to handle cyber security incidents effectively, they can become more proactive in their fight against malicious attacks and find vulnerabilities before they risk damaging the business.

Contact us to learn how you can stay on top of the current threat landscape or talk to our cybersecurity consultants improve your security posture.