How to Protect Enterprise Data

Your corporate data is the most valuable asset that allows your business to grow and you to increase profits by making informed decisions.

→ Often, corporate and sensitive information becomes a target for intruders. Therefore, protecting it should be a priority for you.

Today, I will share with you the secrets of effectively countering intellectual property infringements by implementing modern and high-quality methodologies. Learn more about cybersecurity in this article.

Importance of Data Protection

Today, the world is ruled by information. If you want to develop your business effectively, you need to work proactively with data, in particular:

• Collect current business and market data.
• Analyze the activities of successful segment players and competitors.
• Work with customer information.
• Accumulate and apply knowledge to modernize the brand's activities.
• Build multi-term forecasts based on available data.

If you have a lot of information, it is likely that your competitors or attackers have already targeted it and are preparing to attack your digital infrastructure to get the data if they're not already doing it quietly.

It is because of the competition for valuable data that you need to protect corporate information from various threats.

Understanding Enterprise Data

Enterprise data can be internal documents with sensitive information, such as customer records, contacts, etc.

In general, anything that you can use to grow your business, including sales, marketing, and generating valuable products and offers, can be considered enterprise data. And there are many types of it.

Types of Data in Enterprises

The previous paragraph summarizes the concept of corporate information but does not explain its value. Now, I'm going to correct this shortcoming and, at the same time, introduce you to the most common types of data used to improve business efficiency and most often targeted by intruders.

Take a look at the four classifications of valuable information.

1. Sensitive Personal Information (SPI)

In other words, this is confidential information that, although used to personalize offers, is not disclosed under any circumstances. This can include personal contacts, addresses, medical information, health information, and current problems and needs of customers.

Such data is collected only with the consent of the owners and imposes certain obligations and responsibilities on the companies to which it is transferred. If you don't keep it secret, the consequences may well bury your business.

2. Intellectual Property (IP)

Any information, digital systems, tools, or programs that you have developed or obtained ownership rights to are considered intellectual property.

This data is also typically the target of attacks by intruders. And if they are successful, the result will be the theft of information and its use for mercenary purposes. And your company will suffer financial and reputational losses.

3. Customer Data

Unlike sensitive information, this type of data is purely commercial in nature. It contains information such as:

• User interests.
• Attendance of certain pages.
• Number and frequency of interactions.
• Previous contacts, sales.
• Geolocation and other indicators.

Why is this information valuable? It allows competitors to literally lure your customers to their companies, which will reduce your profits and reduce your business audience.

4. Financial Data

This data section covers several types of information, for example:

• Reporting for a certain period.
• Company's income/expenses.
• Investments, in particular in marketing and technology.
• Percentage of returns and disputes.
• Business development plans and projects.

Such data can be used against you as leverage or simply to analyze and intercept the initiative of competitors in the target market.

And there are several ways to steal your data. Let's talk about them below.

Common Threats to Enterprise Data

In one of my previous articles, I have already talked about common cyber threats. Most of them are dangerous because they can potentially destroy or steal your corporate data.

★ Let me briefly remind you of the most dangerous ones.

1. Cybersecurity Threats

Cyber threats are various types of external actions aimed at harming, stealing, or destroying company data. Sometimes, attackers do this for mercenary purposes, for example, to benefit from the owners of information through blackmail. It is also common for this data to be transferred to competitors of the brand, posted on free exchanges, etc.

The following methods and tools are used to attack an enterprise, or rather its digital infrastructure.

2. Malware and Ransomware

Special software that is usually disguised as the following types of files:

• REG, or registry data sets.
• EXE/BAT/MSI, etc., i.e., files that are run by the system.
• Any type of file with modified code.

After malware enters the system and receives appropriate permissions, it often installs “invisible” programs that perform targeted illegal actions. In particular, they block access to the system, steal information, demand to transfer funds, etc.

3. Phishing Attacks

Special links or requests are made to gain access to the system. These can be both e-mails and direct connections through various remote administration tools and their analogs.

4. Insider Threats

The so-called “moles” are sent by competitors or intruders who collect information, store data on external media, and transfer it to customers for a fee.

However, sometimes, there are cases when an employee simply neglects digital security and accidentally or unknowingly transfers data or access to it to third parties.

5. Compliance and Regulatory Risks

Typically, digital systems must comply with various ISO, GDPR, and other standards, depending on the business's industry and region of operation. However, sometimes this rule is ignored, which leads to data leaks.

All of these cyber threats can be mitigated, but only if you have an effective strategy to combat them. I'll tell you how to build one in the following.

Strategies for Protecting Enterprise Data

If you've ever been interested in the topic of responding to cyber threats and protecting corporate data, you've probably researched various modern methodologies. In fact, the purely technical part, i.e., the so-called “security component”, only works if your business has a thorough digital security doctrine.

It is a framework that should be implemented along with the first products deployed in your infrastructure. Here are the elements it typically includes.

1. Data Encryption

Encryption means that your data is protected by sophisticated algorithms and stored in a non-operational form. That is, no one can access the information without a special key. There are several types of encryption, for example:

• At-Rest Encryption. Static protection of information when a password or other method of user authorization and authentication is required to access it.
• In-Transit Encryption. The so-called “end-to-end encryption” that allows access to information only by devices between which files are transferred.

Keynote: both types should be used in tandem to ensure maximum data protection from external interference.

2. Access Control

However, to minimize the risks of external interference, you should build a system like Castle And Moat with some Zero Trust components. Here are the key focus points to achieve this goal:

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). The users should only have access to data that is within their area of competence. For example, a sales manager cannot open files related to the company's strategic planning, etc.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Even a corporate account can be hijacked. Therefore, it is best to use multi-factor authentication to identify users, such as additional checks of identity, mobile, etc.

In fact, this list can be expanded further, but these items are the basis that a company needs to effectively protect corporate data.

3. Regular Data Backups

No further explanation here. You should save your data to backups at least once a day. In addition, you need to have several iterations of these copies to be able to restore data in case of data corruption.

4. Employee Training and Awareness

Your staff interacts with information the most. And they are the ones who most often cause data leaks or system infections. Therefore, proactively educate employees, conduct training, and show practical examples of working with risks and cyber threats and adequate responses to all of the above.

5. Developing an Incident Response Plan

Have a contingency plan in place. Even having a backup won't help if you can't respond quickly to cyber threats. Make a risk table, or better yet, implement a risk management program. Yes, this is a difficult and somewhat costly task, but the loss of information is more expensive, so keep this in mind.

Conclusion

To summarize, businesses of all sizes and types face cyber threats almost every day.

As you can see, even tech giants sometimes get into trouble with data breaches.

Yes, it's impossible to protect yourself from cyber threats 100% of the time, but you should do everything you can to minimize the potential impact of excesses on your business.