(Photo : Jefferson Santos on Unsplash)

Hacking and cyberattacks have become common enough that everyone understands the need to protect their businesses from them. Both consumers and businesses are vulnerable, but a company has a greater responsibility to put the necessary security measures in place. A security breach for a business not only results in lost revenue, but it can also irrevocably damage trust in its brand by current and potential customers and business partners.

Understand the Importance of Cybersecurity

The first step to incorporating security measures is to understand their importance. Unfortunately, cyberattacks have increased in frequency and scale over the years. Hackers don't stop at targeting individuals and businesses. They also have no qualms about taking down government agencies, such as the recent attack on the Ukraine's Ministry of Defense website. Therefore, it is extremely important, now more than ever, to level up your company's security measures by using safe storage and encryption practices.

Your company may also be required to conform to strict regulations that dictate the handling of sensitive data. Whether you're dealing with personal information, payment details, or even sensitive data like medical records or Social Security numbers, you must protect your customers. 

Even once all the security measures have been put in place, businesses still have a responsibility to prevent breaches. Unfortunately, employees are the culprit for many of these breaches because of negligence or errors. 

Train Employees

Most employees know better than to click on links in emails from unknown senders. Unfortunately, phishing scams are rather sophisticated these days, where the sender masquerades as a trusted source. It's really important to hold regular training sessions and educate your employees about the latest scams. Everyone in your company should be hyper-aware of how damaging a potential breach can be.

There's more to it than not opening suspicious emails. Most employees don't even log out or shut down their workstations when they go home for the day. They also don't always shred paperwork that needs to be destroyed. To reduce or eliminate the possibility of employee error, you must keep your most important documents secure.

Use a Virtual Data Room

Establishing the importance of cybersecurity and training your employees are only the first steps of keeping your documents secure. The best security measures don't rely on your employees to follow instructions perfectly 100% of the time. Instead, they make compliance easy by automating the process.

Centralizing your document storage is an important step to keeping your data secure. It makes it easy to find what you're looking for, and it allows you to control access. Your electronic documents should be encrypted, and you must set up permissions to grant access where it's needed. Additionally, instead of controlling access individually, it's best to create group permissions.

CapLinked's virtual data room (VDR) offers a trustworthy solution for sharing documents and negotiating business deals, such as mergers and acquisitions, which require the sharing of a great deal of sensitive documents and data. A VDR meets all the requirements to keep your company's data safe, including DRM and the option to watermark your most important files. It also allows you to track changes made to your documents. Implementing these types of cybersecurity measures can make all the difference in protecting your business from a data breach.