Globally, 64% of companies have experienced at least one type of cyber attack. Among the most damaging and expensive for a business is a data breach.
Data breaches can be incredibly costly for a business. They can also lead to significant downtime and may damage your business’ reputation. If you don’t secure business and customer data then it could end up sinking your business.
So why is encryption important and how can it help? Below we’ll tell you everything that you need to know.
What Is Data Encryption?
Encryption is a process of protecting data by converting it into a format that can’t be read by normal means.
With the help of complex algorithms, data will be transformed and will be inaccessible to parties who aren’t authorized to access it. Someone would have to decrypt the data with a secret number, known as a key, in order to get it back to its prior form.
Data encryption works to protect a business and keep critical data secure and private.
For businesses that deal with sensitive information, it’s essential to make use of data encryption. Data encryption can help to protect the interest of you and your customers. It can help ensure that your business can keep operating smoothly with minimal security and privacy concerns.
Why Is Encryption Important?
So why exactly is encryption so important for data management? Here are some of the main reasons why you need to use data encryption in your business.
Extra Protection From Breaches
Aside from using data encryption, there are other forms of security strategies that you can use to protect your network and prevent access from unauthorized third parties. Protecting the network with firewalls and instructing employees on good security practices to follow can help to protect your business to a large degree.
Once a hacker gains access to your network, encryption can serve as a strong security measure to prevent them from actually being able to read your important data. It can help to protect the privacy of your business if all else fails.
Improves the Safety of Remote Data
Many employees use mobile devices to handle important work tasks these days. Unfortunately, this can serve as a liability and a potential risk.
Data encryption can help with this. Encrypting data can help to protect sensitive information even when an employee is working remotely and using a network other than your well-protected business network.
Helps Meet Compliance Standards
One of the most essential reasons to use data encryption is that it can help your company meet compliance standards and regulations.
Many standards have been set by General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. Because of this, it’s important that you stay current with security standards and that you prevent data breaches to the best of your ability.
Failing to comply with security standards and regulations with the help of encryption can lead to legal issues and fines.
Implementing Data Encryption
There are a few key steps that you’ll want to follow when encrypting data in your business. Here’s how you should go about encrypting data in your organization.
Determine Data Priorities
First, you’ll want to think about what your security needs are and what data should be encrypted in your business. There are many different types of data and some of it will be more sensitive than others.
Some types of data that you might want to consider encrypting include sensitive customer data such as credit card numbers and personal information.
You’ll want to classify your data and determine the priority of encryption for each bit of data that you have. You should also keep data security regulations in mind as well as decide which data to encrypt.
Choose an Encryption Tool
Once you know which data you want to encrypt, you then need to be sure that you have the tools to do it. There are many different data encryption software tools available that you can use to encrypt databases as well as individual files.
You’ll want to compare a few options. Be sure that you find the tool that is the most suitable for your business and for the type of data that you want to encrypt. You might want to make use of multiple tools at once that use both secure sockets layer (SSL) as well as advanced encryption standard (AES) protocols.
Plan Implementation
After choosing the data that you will encrypt and deciding on the tools that you’ll use to do it, you need to be sure that you implement your encryption strategy in a smooth and calculated way. You’ll want to be especially careful with how you integrate your encryption standards into customer-facing applications and legacy systems.
Create a solid step-by-step plan and be sure that you have a strong IT team in place who can help carry it out. Alternatively, consider relying on a third-party IT security provider to get extra help.
Maintain Strong Security Standards
After you’ve implemented new encryption standards in your business, make sure that you’re not relying on them fully as your only source of security. Make sure that you’re also training your team well in security practices and that you’re using other security tools to keep your business as well-protected as possible.
Human error and other security vulnerabilities also play a part in data security, so ensure that you have a full-scope plan for keeping your data safe. Don’t rely on encryption alone to do all of the work.
Make sure that you’re using an encryption solution along with other security applications and tools such as AWS cloud security. You might want to check out Protech’s blog to learn more.
Understanding Data Encryption
So, why is encryption important for a business? Because so many businesses experience cyberattacks and data breaches these days, you need to do everything you can to keep your data secure.
Keeping data secure will help prevent business setbacks. It will also help it maintain a strong reputation and meet compliance standards.
Looking for more business cybersecurity tips and tricks? Browse our blog now to find more useful articles.
