Data breaches can cause serious damage to any business. All employees need to handle confidential information carefully at all times. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to increase your company’s document security, such as shredding important paper documents and converting files to PDF format. While shredding works for paper documents, do you need to take extra precautions for data stored on electronic devices. In order to ensure your business remains safe, read below to learn a few different types of data breaches and how to prevent them.
Password Breaches
Too often, large businesses use passwords such as “12345” or “abc123.” Unfortunately, it isn’t challenging for hackers to guess these types of passwords. A few ways to ensure your passwords remain safe are to reset them every couple of months and create secure passwords that use numbers, special characters, and random words or phrases.
Monitoring Keystrokes
Keyloggers are a type of malware that allows hackers to monitor your keystrokes. Clearly, this can lead to some serious issues and allow hackers to record passwords, financial information, and other important data. Thankfully, you can easily install key encryption software on your electronic devices to prevent this problem.
Beware of Phishing
Hackers can create realistic sites and emails, send them to companies, and then receive confidential information. This practice is called phishing, and it can affect companies and individual employees. The best way to prevent phishing is to be aware. If you do not know the origin of a website or if the link looks strange, avoid going to the website.
Viruses and Malware
Viruses and malware can wipe information from any electronic device. Of course, this can be catastrophic for all types of business, especially if they keep important information online. Similar to phishing, the best way to prevent viruses and malware is being aware of the danger. If you receive a link and you don’t know where it is from or where it leads to, don’t click it. You can also install antimalware software to prevent these types of attacks.
These are just a few of the different types of data breaches and how to prevent them. Be sure to educate your employees and peers on this matter to ensure your business’s confidential information remains safe.