As more businesses continue to move towards digital and cloud data storage for solutions, never forget that securing your company’s private documents is a tougher proposition than ever. Modern technology has made it easier to store, retrieve and move information than ever before, but securing that data is itself an ever-shifting target that can only be reached through vigilance and proactive efforts to guard your corporate information. While every company has its own unique security policy, here are five tips that successful businesses use to guard their data.

1. Make Sure You Have Up-to-Date Data Security Policy & Everyone is Aware of Their Role

Everyone in the company who has access to proprietary data should know best practices to make sure that your corporate data is protected. Security policies should be in compliance with data security laws (this varies from industry to industry) and should be applied uniformly throughout. Variations in this policy, depending on the department, should be based around fulfilling a department’s needs while still adhering to the highest security standards possible.

2. Look For the Weakest Link in the Security Chain

There is no such thing as an employee or a department whose data security needs are “lower”: the lowest-security link is the weakest one in the chain. Especially with remote employees, contractors, and certain other employee groups, data security often gets treated as a secondary concern. This is a huge mistake, as those are often the areas that are most easily targeted outside, and can become windows for data corruption, theft, or worse. A secure server-to-remote-client policy in these cases is often helpful.

3. Make Sure to Keep Your Software (Particularly Security Software) Secure and Up-to-date

Depending on what type of technology you are using, you may have a security suite in place that is usually updated whenever data breaches occur. Making sure to keep your security software updated is one of the easiest ways to ensure compliance and avoid getting caught with yesterday’s virus. While security software alone can’t protect companies from everything, it can make an enormous difference in how many potential threats even come close to their targets.

4. Don’t Be Afraid of Outsourced IT Support

If you don’t have a full-size IT department, or your IT department can become quickly overwhelmed by a staff-to-tech ratio, it’s not a bad idea to make the use of outsourced IT security management services to help protect your business. Often, outsourced IT support services have a lot more experience with different security types and models and are experts at finding the “blind spots” even seasoned IT professionals might miss. Don’t be afraid to look for help when you need it outside your internal IT network.

5. Have IT Disaster Recovery Management Plans in Place

One place outsourced support can be handy is in setting up and having disaster recovery plans in place. This is incredibly important, because planning for a worst-case scenario is the only way you’ll be able to realistically assess just how good a security system that you have. As a rule of thumb, always prepare for the worst-case scenario. Create a detailed recovery solution for all of your corporate data and operations to support your business in case disaster strikes.

Relieve your team of the daily IT ground and beef up your corporate data security with help from the IT security experts at JENLOR. Our IT security management services offer you around-the-clock protection and support against any cyber threat out there. Don’t leave your data at risk, start safeguarding your business with help from JENLOR today.