Database Management: Tips to Avoid Data Leakage in your Business

Data, documents and information in general are the most important and valuable assets for companies. These provide confidential or sensitive information, both of the company itself and its customers and the leakage (theft) of these can pose a serious problem for the company such as: Reputation crisis, economic losses, loss of customers, etc.

Therefore, the collection, classification and consultation of such data must be carried out and treated according to certain rules of use and treatment.

These data are mostly collected in databases to facilitate their management and storage, being able to organize and locate them easily, for example by segments. A very useful method for the different departments of the company.

Importance of a good database management: Data Protection Act

In 2018, the New Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was approved, which obliges any company (regardless of its size) to ensure its correct data processing and protection.

This Regulation obliges companies to:

• Guarantee the integrity of user data: they cannot be used by unauthorized third parties.
• Obtain the consent of users for their collection and processing (sending commercial information).
• Inform the user of their ARCO rights (Access, rectification, cancellation and opposition). That is to say, the user will be able to remove his data from a database whenever he wishes and at any time, as well as to specify that he does not want them to be used or processed by third parties.Among other obligations that you can find in detail in the BOE.

To comply with the RGPD, it is important to properly manage the databases of your company to avoid leakage or theft of these and violate the law.

Measures and recommendations to prevent data leakage

Data processing is one of the main issues to take into account if you want to guarantee the integrity of your customers’ data, avoiding data leakage that could endanger their information, but also your company.

Very important, develop a cybersecurity strategy.

A cybersecurity strategy serves to develop an IT security protocol in your company, that is, to establish all those cybersecurity solutions that you will integrate in your company to prevent the entry of malware into your system and any type of cyberattack.

Having firewalls, endpoints, anti-phishing solutions… These are some of the solutions that you should have in your company to prevent cybercriminals from accessing your IT infrastructure and stealing your company’s confidential information, in order to demand a ransom for its recovery.

Periodically track your company’s security breaches.

Periodic monitoring of your systems will allow you to know the security breaches that your IT infrastructure may have, thus being able to solve them before a cybercriminal manages to breach them.

In Cybermatters we have developed a 5-minute test, so that you can know the level of computer security of your system. You can do it by clicking on the following banner.

Saving your passwords in Excel? Don’t even think about it

There are many companies that still do not use a credential manager and store their passwords in an excel. For cybercriminals, accessing these documents is not complicated at all, making it easy for them to get the credentials quickly and easily without your knowledge until you have suffered a cyber-attack or data leak.

Having a credential manager is the most recommended solution to protect your information.

Don’t forget to develop a Disaster Recovery Plan.

A Disaster Recovery Plan or a recovery plan is a document developed by the company, which serves to establish protocols for action in the event of cyber-attacks. It is to determine how the company will proceed in order to minimize the damage and restore normality in the shortest possible time and at the lowest possible cost.

Regular backups, please.

When cybercriminals attack a system, it is to obtain information and ask for an economic ransom in exchange for returning it (which never happens). To have backups allows to be able to recover the information immediately, without falling in the blackmails of the cybercriminals.

Having your information in the cloud does not mean that you have backup copies of your information. We recommend that you assign a person responsible for these backups and that he or she performs them periodically, if you cannot automate them. Many cloud solutions already offer this fully automatic service.

Control access to information very well.

Do your employees need to have access to all company information? The fewer people can access certain data, the safer they will be. To do this, you can assign a manager to be responsible for giving and removing permissions for the consultation, storage and processing of information, so that only those employees who really need it, have access to it. This is a way to prevent unauthorized third parties from accessing the information for illicit purposes.

It has the help of an IT (either internal or external).

Having an IT department, whether external or internal, will ensure that your IT systems and infrastructure are always protected, because they will be in the hands of experts who will know how to act at all times, whether in the face of a threat from a cybercriminal or when the system has been attacked.

Cybermatters, your outsourced IT department

We have created a precise methodology that we call Cybermatters Defense and which consists of three pillars: Cybermatters Attack, Cybermatters Control and Cybermatters Training.

Cybermatters Attack

The first thing we do is to launch controlled attacks on the system to discover vulnerabilities and security gaps in order to implement the required cybersecurity measures (anti-phishing, endpoints, backups, password encryption, firewalls…).

Cybermatters Control

We also implement a system that helps to encrypt the information so that only those you decide have access to it, in addition to knowing at all times who has last accessed or manipulated.

Cybermatters Training

Finally, one of the mainstays of today’s IT defense is the training of the employees that enter the system every day. We take care of training your team so that they know how to detect threats before they infect your IT infrastructure.

Here is one of our success stories to give you a better idea of how we can protect your databases.

For more information you can contact us at the following link.