Data is increasingly seen as an asset because of its strategic value. At the same time, cyberattacks are becoming ever more sophisticated.
Because of this, protecting your company's data means improving the customer experience and ensuring the integrity of their negotiations, projects, and transactions.
Want to learn more about how to ensure data protection in your company? Keep reading and find out!
What does data security mean?
Data security refers to the protective measures used to safeguard data against unauthorized access and to preserve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your company's information.
Good data security practices include data protection techniques such as data encryption, key management, data redaction, data subsetting, and data masking, as well as privileged user access controls, auditing, and monitoring.
In addition, data security also includes training those who access the data, whether customers or company employees.
The importance of data security
Data is one of the most important assets for any organization. It is therefore essential to protect it from any and all unauthorized access.
Confidential data can include personally identifiable information, financial information, health information, and intellectual property. It must therefore be protected to help prevent a data breach.
Data breaches, failed audits, and failure to meet regulatory requirements can result in reputational damage, loss of brand value, compromised intellectual property, and non-compliance fines for companies.
Data security at Enacom
For Enacom, information security comes first, which is why we are always attentive to the security of our clients' data.
We offer our partners computing solutions capable of driving digital transformation in their businesses, with the goal of generating value and ensuring a competitive edge.
Rafael Medeiros, Software Development Manager at Enacom, explains that when delivering innovative and secure solutions to clients, we most often have to work with a massive volume of data with sensitive characteristics, and that considerable care is needed in this process.
Aspects of data security
Data security concerns all preventive or reactive actions aimed at preserving the information that users share on the internet.
To protect data against theft, unauthorized modification, and malicious access by third parties, security is based on the following aspects:
- Confidentiality: allows only authorized people to have access to the information
- Authenticity and integrity: ensures that information is true and preserves its originality, preventing it from being altered during the process
- Compliance: ensures that data is processed correctly, following established regulations, laws, and standards
- Availability: allows authorized people to access the data whenever necessary
- Non-repudiation: makes it impossible to deny authorship of a transaction
How does digital security help improve the customer experience?
Data security is important to ensure that information is increasingly safe.
This directly impacts the customer's experience with your company, since they will feel at ease sharing data, knowing their information will be protected.
That said, the chance of increasing customer retention and loyalty is much greater when you invest in security and better usability.
At Enacom, when our clients send us their data, they trust that we will protect it and use it in the best possible way in building the project.
A customer with a good experience, who feels safe working with your company, can become a potential promoter, recommending your solutions to friends and giving public praise.
Data security challenges
In the digital era we live in, information has value, credibility, and competitive advantage for companies. Knowing this, hackers have been devising increasingly sophisticated strategies to access company data and information.
These criminal acts can be divided into two groups: external and internal attacks.
External attacks can come from anyone, from lone hackers and cybercriminals seeking business disruption or financial gain, to criminal groups and state-sponsored organizations seeking to commit fraud in order to create disruptions on a national or global scale.
Internal attacks can involve current or former employees, curious individuals, and clients or partners who take advantage of their position of trust to steal data or who make a mistake that results in an unintentional security event.
According to Rafael Medeiros, hackers' strategies often involve social engineering, which psychologically manipulates users in order to gain access to restricted systems. “Because of this, the great challenge [for data security] is keeping people informed and engaged in the information security process,” he explains.
Both outsiders and insiders can create risks to the security of personal data, financial data, trade secrets, and regulated data. It is therefore important to invest in the security of the data your company holds.
How much does a data leak cost?
A lack of data security can lead to cyberattacks and information leaks that significantly affect companies' credibility.
According to a study conducted by International Business Machines Brasil, the average cost of a data breach in Brazil is more than one million reais. The research also showed that the country is one of the most vulnerable to security breaches, with a 43% chance of a company suffering a cyberattack.
In addition, the study also shows that 96% of Brazilians believe companies, in general, do not take measures to protect their data. This shows how data security has been viewed by users, and how important it is to understand how they feel about the security of their data.
How can you ensure data security in your company?
Here are some important measures for applying an effective data security policy in your company.
Map your business
Before you start outlining the best data security strategy for your business, it is important to assess the infrastructure and systems used in your organization. This way you will be able to identify which points need more attention and which measures will be most appropriate.
Use cloud security systems
Many companies store their data in the cloud, so it is important to invest in methods that ensure the information will be safe and easily recoverable in case of loss.
In addition, cloud data security means companies are not held hostage by physical servers, making the process more dynamic as well as secure.
Back up your data
Another important point is to make copies of your company's data. This is because you can lose it to a cyberattack, a system failure, or even human error.
With a backup, you ensure you will always have access to the necessary information, and you will not be held hostage by hackers if your data is stolen.
Invest in two-factor authentication
A common tactic to increase data security is to add a second layer that verifies whether an account login is being made by an authorized person.
This technology greatly reduces the risk of password theft and has been widely used by financial institutions.
Data security best practices
Data security best practices should be adopted both on local servers and in the cloud to mitigate the risk of a data breach and help achieve regulatory compliance.
Specific recommendations for each company may vary, but they typically call for a layered data security strategy designed to apply a defense-in-depth approach, since different controls mitigate different threat vectors.
Enacom works under the pillars of information security, which are: confidentiality; integrity; availability; non-repudiation; and authenticity. Therefore, through data security and protection policies, access and identity management, and passwords and encryption, we are able to manage and mitigate the risks of data breaches.
In the market since 2009, Enacom is qualified to work with data securely and responsibly, giving you and your company greater peace of mind.
To develop optimized and secure solutions for your company, talk to our specialists, we can help you!