Regardless of how renowned your brand is, as a business owner, you always find yourself worrying about securing your information. Technology and the versatility thereof does breed a lot of favorable room for cybersecurity threats for all types of businesses. The good news is that cloud technology and other backup methods can be relied on to safeguard data.
However, even they cannot be secure on their own. There is a need for you to be proactive in ensuring that your cloud backups are well kept and secured. Here are tips to get it done for your company:
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Try your cloud service before you buy
Before you subscribe to any company, you must be one to test the advantages that your company is set to derive from it. In the same way, before you determine for a certain cloud service provider, make sure you are aware of how well the service can work for your business.
Test the security levels of your backups at any given time, particularly during the upload and download sessions. If the processes take too long, then the more vulnerable your data is to security malfunctions and risks. Ensure that your tests are done with meaningless documents so that you do not stand to risk your sensitive details on the trial period. While at it, be particular with studying the terms of service. Be keen to know more about data ownership once on the cloud, and whether or not you can retrieve from the service in case of a security threat.
Have a Strong Password
Figure 1 passwords
Passwords are the most basic ay that someone can protect their information. However, just because it is a common concept, doesn’t mean that it is ineffective. Passwords that are well crafted can go a long way in safeguarding your information, both on the cloud on onsite. The idea is to determine strong passcodes that can withstand hacker cracking.
For the most part, the basic guidelines in making strong passwords are:
- Make it long enough – short passwords are easier to crack than long ones. Therefore, determine one of about 12 characters.
- Use alphanumeric – by now, you must have created so many passwords as to understand the basic rule of using alphanumeric characters in combination
- Use symbols, e.g. @,#,*,$,%
- Avoid subsequent characters, both letters and numbers, e.g., 1234, or ijkl
Encrypt your backups
Figure 2 encrypt
Data encryption is a concept that is growing prominent by the day. If you have the software and hardware in place for it, then it should not be a question of whether, but of when. Encryption of data for storage regardless of your backup strategy is very necessary. For one, data encryption is very particular in restricting third-party access without authorization.
With cloud technologies such as Ottomatik you will acquire services from a service provider that is outside your business stakeholders. This, therefore, means that there will be other people, other than your business members, that can access your information on the cloud. With an encryption code in place before you upload your documents, then yo0u can be sure that no one can access the files without decrypting them with a unique code for which you are the custodian of. Fortunately, some cloud services offer encryption for their users. But even then, you can still determine another encryption code before you upload your content to the cloud.
Limit access
Once you have established the perfect codes for your passwords and encryptions, be intentional about the number of people that can access your backups. Whether or not they are your staff members or friends, ensure that you have levels of access in such a way to control the information being accessed by different entities. This, therefore, calls for a system of organization that will set apart your information and files based on priority and sensitivity of the data thereof.
Proper storage for your codes
Once your codes are determined, the final layer of protection for your cloud backups is to have an appropriate storage area for all your codes. It is one thing to encrypt, and password protects your files, but as long as the codes are accessible to anyone, it would be very easy to decrypt and tamper with the security of your information. Remember that, if you lose the keys, you will also no longer have access to the data.
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