You start your day staring silently at your computer screen, skimming in sheer despair, investigating your inbox of a 100 plus unread emails. It’s 8:45am, you can think of much better things to do with your time but here you are killing your inbox, quite literally.
It’s an unsatisfying job, but someone has got to do it. Whilst it’s all fun meandering your inbox, I think you’ll agree that it’s not really that great at allowing you to focus on more important things within your business.
Your business is what you do best.
However, your data security probably isn’t.
Upholding the security of your data is extremely important. Just as it is paying your employees and retaining your clients.
So why is the severity in our minds not as equal?
“It’s not my responsibility”, “we have it covered”, “we’re using this and we’re happy”.
“it’s not you, it’s me” and so on.
I hate to break this to you but your data security is probably about as good as a chocolate teapot.
It may look good but when you’re in hot water it’s weak as ****.
Over four in ten of all UK businesses suffered a breach or attack in the past 12 months. www.gov.uk
Most common attacks were fraudulent emails followed by cyber criminals impersonating an organisation online www.gov.uk
So let’s put this to the test…
10 questions. Can you answer them all with confidence?
“Where is your data stored?”
“Who has access to your data?”
“Do your employees have access to the right data, how do you know?”
“Can you prove you didn’t have a data breach?”
“Can you prove you did have a data breach?”
“What encryption methods are you using?“
“Who has access to the encryption keys?”
“Are you confident about data access?”
“Is the data stored to your regulations?”
“Are you confident your reputation will remain intact if you suffer a data breach?”
If you can’t answer the questions above then hopefully you may now start to see the importance of data security.
It’s not about pointing the finger. it’s about ensuring you’ve done enough to protect your data.
Mistakes happen. It’s what we’ve done to avoid the mistake in the first place that matters the most.
Not being open to change, “I’ve got this sorted already!” and “I’m not interested” isn’t helping your business.
Companies can significantly reduce their chances of falling victim by following simple cybersecurity steps to remove basic weaknesses.
Ciaran Martin, CEO of the NCSC
In my opinion, I believe we’re creatures of habit and when it comes to it, convenience overrides security (which is not a good thing).
An uninterrupted workflow that’s secure is key to reducing data breaches. There are vast amounts of technology out there but most of it requires something more for you to do which means you’ll be a lot less likely to do it.
Pushing the responsibility of your data security on someone else will only end up coming back to bite you right in the ***.
So, I leave you with this…
Be open to better ways of securing your data
Don’t become stale with one solution because it’s more convenient
Be aware of new threats that could compromise your business
Who else agrees?
