Hackers, thieves, burglars, bandits, and crooks.
When someone says “data security,” that’s who we usually think of.
People who are external to your company. People you want to keep out—away from your data. The digital equivalent of these guys:
You may not realize it, but external threats aren’t your biggest data security threat.
In most companies, disgruntled or careless employees are the biggest threat to cybersecurity.
In one recent study of U.S.companies:
- 92% reported a data security incident in the last 12 months
- 74% of breaches originated internally—either with employees, ex-employees, or contracted third-parties
If you haven’t had a data security problem yet, consider yourself lucky—and know that your time is coming.
Here are a few tips to help you survive when the inevitable data security incident happens:
Backup Everything
You don’t know where or how a data breach will happen. You don’t know how bad it will be, or whether the data you rely on will be changed, corrupted, or deleted in the process.
This is why you need a full, secure backup of all your company data, including databases, files, data you have in cloud apps like Evernote or OneNote, and even email and chat messages.
This is a secure backup, saved in a place where employees or contractors can’t access or modify the data you save there.
You hope you never have to use the backup.
But it’s like insurance. When you need it, you’ll be grateful it’s there.
Your employees may have access to their email or your company’s shared drive.
But only you have access to the backup.
What if You Get Sued or Audited?
What your accounting team finds discrepancies in your records?
A secure backup will ensure you have the real, unaltered data you need to defend yourself and your company in court.
How to Set Up a Secure, Permanent Backup
We recommend creating an automatic, secure cloud storage backup of all your files using a storage service like Amazon S3.
Full instructions for how to do this are here:
You can also use Box, Dropbox, or Google Drive as your backup location.
A similar process can be used for any file you have in your company.
Surviving a Data Security Event
With a secure backup in place, if you have a data security event, none of your organization’s cloud information will be lost, altered, or corrupted.
If you get sued or audited, you’ll have the records you need to show what really happened.
Using this method, you can reliably backup the data from enterprise cloud platforms including:
- Google Apps (Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Contacts)
- Microsoft Office 365
- Sharepoint
- Salesforce
- Oracle Sales Cloud
- Box
- Dropbox
- Evernote
- Basecamp
- Yandex
- webDAV
You don’t have to run backups or remember to do anything. Everything happen automatically and in real time.
There is also nothing to download—since the backup process happens entirely in the cloud.