When it comes to securing sensitive information, it’s vital to distinguish between data protection, data security and data privacy. Although they may sound the similar, each serves a different purpose in your organization’s overall strategy for protecting data. Data protection best practices help secure your company’s data against corruption, compromise and loss by establishing protocols and controls to restrict access, monitor activity, and recognize and respond to threats. Data security is about protecting the integrity of your data as well as protecting your data from fraudulent changes while data privacy dictates who can access your data and what can be shared with third-party organizations.
To see this here properly organize your data security, begin by performing a complete audit of your company’s infrastructure to determine the type and origin of data that you collect. This lets you map your systems and determine the policies you should implement along with a risk assessment, which will assist you in deciding how to prioritize your efforts based on the most significant risks to your data.
Once you have mapped your data it is time to create a classification system. This is the foundation for creating use and modification access controls and will help to ensure compliance requirements are met. Whether you’re using a role-based or access-oriented classification schema it must be consistent and easy to follow, reducing the risk of human error which could leave data unprotected.
Additionally, you’ll need implement a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery plan that protects your data in the event of a cyber incident. Encrypting your data when it is in rest and in transit is one method to ensure that hackers are unable to read your data. It is also important to regularly update your backup and disaster recovery plan in order to ensure that you are able to continue running your business even should there be a cyberattack.