Know What Your IT-Related Risks Are

Every company should conduct an IT risk assessment at least once a year. A thorough IT risk assessment will help identify and prioritize problem areas.

It’s not enough to know “what” the problems are, the “where” is critical, too. A good IT risk assessment can save money in the long run.

First, get compliant with all relevant government and industry data preservation standards. But achieving compliance is pointless if the company can’t consistently maintain it. Develop a process to manage compliance and keep compliance records up-to-date.

Hire an independent auditor to run penetration tests to find the vulnerabilities in the system. Run social engineering tests as well.

All companies need to assume they will need an incident response plan. If your organization doesnt have one, develop a plan soon. Practice the plan, so when data breaches happen, everyone knows what to do immediately.

People are inadvertently the most common causes of security leaks. Teach employees—top to bottom—to be careful of what they do on personal devices and what corporate data they download.

Encrypt sensitive data stored on servers, laptops and portable media. If data is being stored on highly portable USB flash drives, encrypt those, too. If any of them are lost, no one can access the encrypted data.

Require all employees—from the highest to the lowest—to change passwords frequently and make sure the selected passwords are strong. Educate users to not reuse passwords across multiple business or even personal accounts.

Use a separate machine for financial transactions such as banking and payroll. Don’t access anything else, such as email or any other Websites from that machine, to foil malware and phishing schemes.

Security is more than just preventing or limiting what people can do. Good security enables businesses to operate more securely by protecting revenue and profits that could be lost through a data breach. Treat security as an essential part of the company’s mission.