As a business owner, no decision made regarding your business is ever made lightly. Even when you are doing something as simple as shopping for electronics for your business, you are going to be faced with decisions like should you buy a secure USB flash drive or could you get away with a flash drive that isn’t encrypted?
Now, any seasoned business owner is going to point you in the direction of the more secure and encrypted option. Why? Well, this is because data can make or break a business depending on whether or not it is protected. Regardless of if the data of your business rots on a computer in your office or gets passed around to other facilities using a file transfer service, you are only going to benefit from understanding how protecting your data protects your business.
Data Drives Revenue
As a business owner, what do you think about? Chances are pretty good budgets and revenues are topics that come up a lot. What some business owners do not realize is there is a strong connection between your business data and the bottom line of your business.
A shoe store, for example, could use rewards and coupons in order to track repeat customers. A doctor must keep all of his or her patient records current and classified. A business owner has to keep up with the inventory of his or her stock. Each of these examples have one thing in common – data. Without data, none of these business owners would be able to stay on budget or meet their revenue goals.
Now, imagine if a hacker was able to access your business data. This hacker could make good money selling the information to a competitor who could use the information to make their business blossom and kill yours all at the same time. This hacker could also apply for credit cards with your customer’s personal information and then use the credit cards to go on shopping sprees.
Data Breaches Are Expensive
It can also be helpful to think about how much a breach of your data would cost you. After all, what business owner likes spending money? According to a Ponemon Institute study, every compromised record during a data breach cost a business owner $214 in the year 2010. The study also revealed that this was $10 more than just a year earlier. If the trend followed that $10 increase every year, every compromised record during a data breach today would cost a business owner $274. Now, just imagine how quickly that cost climbs when hackers compromise hundreds of records at a time.
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How Do You Start Protecting Your Data?
Now that you understand why protecting business data is so important, you are going to want to know how to get started. First, you need to answer these questions:
- How much data needs to be backed up?
- What kind of data is being backed up?
- What operating systems are being used?
Answering these questions will help you figure out the best possible options for securing your business data in order to keep your customers, clients, and your entire business safe.
