The world of work has quickly evolved in the past years due to the pandemic, accelerating the surge of remote work setups and introducing hybrid functions. Whether you’re offering remote, hybrid, or in-office employment opportunities, the world has become more interconnected and reliant on technology. This makes data protection strategies for in-office and remote teams crucial in this evolving workforce landscape.
5 Best Practices in Data Protection
Before we talk about strategies, let’s see how you should protect your data. These tips will help you identify common challenges in protecting your data and how to mitigate these concerns.
1. Classify Data Correctly
When data is misclassified, it might be protected more or less than it should be. For example, classifying common public data as restricted is too much protection. On the other hand, if sensitive and confidential data is misclassified below its rank, it could cause potential legal and reputational damage to the business.
Classifying is easier said than done.
- First, organizations need to identify the right category.
- Second, employees should correctly assess where data should be categorized.
According to the Ponemon Institute, 41.25 percent of all data breaches and unauthorized access were caused by negligent employees and human error.¹
As an organization, it’s critical to categorize data and information properly to ensure proper data management. Typically, these categories fall under restricted, confidential, internal, or public.²
2. Manage Data Access
No one should have control over all information. After determining the category of your data, you need to manage access and privilege to prevent data loss. For example, if your employee only needs access to specific business areas, you don’t need to provide access to confidential client information. This can significantly improve security and ensure every employee only has access to perform their responsibilities.
3. Set Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Protocols
Security measures are essential for data loss prevention. However, if a breach does occur, you will need a robust data backup to support your data security. While you can prevent these events from happening, security breaches and data leaks are still at risk.
When this happens, ensure that your data recovery plans can protect critical information for your business. This data can be stored several ways.
- Store data physically in various locations.
- Utilize cloud storage.
- Partner with reputable third-party cloud service providers.
4. Raise Enterprise Awareness
Let’s say you have all the preventive measures in place—firewalls, security access, data encryption, disaster recovery, and robust storage. If your employees lack cybersecurity training or are unsure about their role in ensuring data integrity, your data protection strategy may still fail.
As stated, human error and negligence contribute to nearly half of all data leaks, losses, and breaches. Also, of the total security incidents, 15 percent are caused by employees outsmarted by external attacks. On the other hand, 18.75 percent are deliberately inflicted by malicious insider employees, which can cost up to $700,000 on average.² This information reveals that internal employees cause three out of four incidents.
Aside from robust safety protocols, it would help to educate employees on how to take part in data protection and privacy security.
- Provide security training from top management down to the last employee.
- Be transparent about the different classification levels they need to interact with daily.
- Assign key personnel and instruct how they should handle various scenarios.
5. Adopt a Positive Mindset to Audits and Compliance
Many people see audit and compliance as a hurdle to daily operations. It’s time-consuming, resource-intensive, and rigid. It can even cause fear among employees and top management, as gaps in compliance could lead to penalties or reputational damage.
However, these processes help maintain compliance and keep companies in check, aiding in data and privacy protection. Instead of seeing audit and compliance as a business obstacle, adopt a positive mindset that prioritizes data integrity.
By fostering a culture of compliance, your organization can embrace the positive side of audit and compliance. Ultimately, this creates a more collaborative and accountable environment, ensuring proper data management.
Read more: Embracing Compliance: Empowering Businesses to Thrive Amidst Evolving Legal Standards
How to Improve Security: 7 Data Protection Strategies for RTO and Remote Teams
Providing employee training and awareness, setting up the best tools, and adhering to regulatory compliance are critical steps to ensure proper data management. Here are ways you can protect data and ensure optimal business operations:
1. Strong Passwords
Passwords serve as a first line of defense, so it’s important to create secure and complicated passwords. However, creating and remembering passwords can be tedious, especially with multiple accounts.
Encourage your employees to diversify their passwords using a variety of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols, which is often required by most applications today. To strengthen their passwords, tell your employees to increase the frequency of these variations, making them harder to identify.
2. Public Use of Mobile Devices
Device management is critical for remote workers. Employees should be warned not to connect to local public Wi-Fi when accessing confidential information or company servers. These networks are not secured and can be easily accessed by malicious attackers, gaining access to your internal systems and possibly causing damage.
3. Two-Factor Authentication
This feature requires access to an account by linking to another account or device and then sending a one-time code. This password serves as another line of defense, as hackers would need access to the other account or device before breaking in.
4. Cybersecurity Policies
Outline your cybersecurity policies clearly, especially with remote or hybrid employees. They should cover protocols concerning local internet connections, use of devices, methods in setting up an account, steps in safe usage, and other security measures.
You can also provide practical applications and real-life scenarios to help employees fully understand the relevance of their actions and avoid security breaches.
5. Cybersecurity Protocols and Tools
Include basic safety programs like anti-malware or antivirus software and firewalls. Many online choices exist, but these programs have different methods and reputations. Choose a reliable one that can protect your remote workers from data breaches, detect suspicious activities, and prevent malicious attacks.
You can also provide remote access software like AnyDesk, Chrome Remote Desktop, or TeamViewer to enable employees to work on their office devices. Instead of downloading sensitive files and compromising data integrity, they can access confidential information without having to enter the office.
6. Data Encryption
Encrypting your data makes it unreadable without a decryption key. If your data gets leaked and falls into the wrong hands, you’re guaranteed they won’t have access without a decryption key. To encrypt your data, you can use software like BitLocker, VeraCrypt, or other programs that support AES or RSA algorithms.
Once encrypted, the data will appear as random characters, making it unreadable to anyone without the key. For added security, you can do the following:
- Store your key away from the encrypted data.
- Generate long and complex keys to withstand attacks.
7. VPN
VPN offers network protection to its users. Remote employees can leverage this to their advantage and access company networks on their devices, even using local connections. This security protects users from cyber-attacks in public spaces by encrypting their internet connection, making it difficult for hackers to intercept tier online activities. Additionally, VPNs can mask a user’s IP address, making it harder to track their location and identity.
8. Partnership with Compliant Organizations
Aside from conducting your own compliance, it’s important to work with compliant and adherent suppliers, service providers, and partners. This includes common regular compliance frameworks like:
- GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
- CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act)
- ISO 27001 (Information Security Management System)
- HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
- PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)
- SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls)
Read more: 7 Tech Essentials for Hybrid Work: From Cybersecurity to Collaboration
Employ reliable and compliant employees with Madison-Davis.
At Madison-Davis, we strive to build mutual and healthy partnerships between employers and employees. Our expertise has taught us to find exceptional talent who can thrive within various organizations and environments.
With our shared knowledge in the industry, we already know what our clients need from our candidates—as well as what our candidates seek from their employers—enabling us to tailor our services depending on your unique organizational needs. We also prepared a comprehensive salary guide this year to guide your business in providing competitive salary compensation to your employees. You may access the salary guide using this link.
References
- “Cost of Insider Risks” Ponemon Institute, 2023,https://www2.dtexsystems.com/l/464342/2023-09-15/3w7l7k/464342/1694800570ZwvyrzsD/2023_Cost_of_Insider_Risks_Global_Report___Ponemon_and_DTEX___Dgtl.pdf
- O’Donnell, Joe. “5 Challenges of Data Protection” Shellman, https://www.schellman.com/blog/cybersecurity/challenges-of-data-protection. 13 Dec. 2024.
