The modern business world is becoming a more volatile place with each passing year, especially now that you, your employees, and your entire company are operating in the online world every day, all day. With digital transformation comes a lot of power and long-term growth potential for every business, but that also means that the risks and hazards in the cyber world are becoming more prevalent as well, which means that you need to really focus on keeping your information safe. This means protecting your business and personal data.
After all, one of the hallmarks of successful women leaders and what makes them stand out is their ability to monitor the trends, assess the risks, and take a proactive approach to achieve the best results possible. In this case, you need to be aware of the threats in the online realm, and take the necessary steps to keep your information, your customers’ data, and your employees safe. Here’s what you need to do.
Start with cybersecurity workshops
Education is the essential pillar of cybersecurity nowadays, simply because your employees are on the front line and their accounts and devices tend to get targeted first by hackers and scammers. Remember, you might have the most sophisticated cybersecurity tools and apps at your disposal, but if you or your employees are not aware of the potential risks and how to prevent nefarious online activity, all of that would have been for nothing. This is why educating yourself and your employees on the foundations of cybersecurity should be your first priority.
However, don’t just read up on it, be sure to bring in your IT experts or external cybersecurity consultants to organize and conduct comprehensive workshops that will really dig deep into the matter. This will allow you to create a more personalized approach to training and address every employee’s weak points and accommodate their needs during the learning process.
Standardize messaging app use
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Nowadays, it safe to say that you use more than one messaging app to chat with your friends and colleagues. Now imagine how many messaging apps your employees and partners might be using on a daily basis to exchange business information and you can start to appreciate the need to create a more standardized system. When you and your employees all use the same app and follow the rules of instant messaging, you get the complete end-to-end data encryption that you need to keep all information safely stored under one roof.
On the other hand, if you send a message from one app to a completely different one, you will lose some of that data protection, which will create a possible entryway for hackers and their malware. Don’t think that this is a far-fetched scenario, instead, be sure to standardize all business communication and make sure that all of it is going through a single messaging app.
Having business insurance is a must
Sometimes, losing data in the online or offline world is inevitable. Business interruptions happen all the time, but no matter if your accounts get hacked or if someone steals a physical hard drive from the office, you need to be prepared with a good insurance policy. Having adequate business insurance protection to cover any and all loss of data is essential in keeping your company running, and most importantly, to get you back on your feet quickly and have the resources to do effective damage control.
Without a comprehensive insurance policy, you are on your own. Aside from cyber insurance and business interruption insurance, you should also get the standard business liability insurance to protect your brand from all legal actions and disgruntled customers.
Strengthen your password policy
One of the most important security measures that many employees and leaders tend to disregard as trivial, is your password policy. Most of the time, we tend to create our own passwords and we tend to let our employees create a password themselves for all of their devices and accounts. Unfortunately, this leaves everyone vulnerable to cyber-attacks more than ever before.
Even though Google has some pretty good tips on how to create a stronger password, nothing can really replace a powerful password manager. Be sure to integrate a password management tool that will create truly strong passwords using randomized strings of letters and special characters to make them impossible to break by malicious software.
Backup your data regularly
Last but not least, you need to back up your data on a daily basis. If you’re already working with a reliable cloud provider, then your business data is already being backed up on the cloud daily, but if you’re running an in-house IT team, you have to check if they are being diligent with data backup and recovery. Make sure that you are backing up your personal and computer data on a separate hard drive as well, and check if your employees are doing the same. This way, you’ll know that you always have a way to resume your operation quickly in case of a system failure or data loss.
Wrapping up
Investing in data protection and cybersecurity is becoming more important than ever, especially for women leaders on the rise who are prime targets for hackers and scammers. Be sure to use these tips to keep your information and your employees safe so that you can take your company forward.
