Data Breaches – How Our Good Practices Keep Your Data Safe?
| Summary: How to keep your data safe? The shortest (and overarching) answer to that is: to make the right choices. Clearly, the short answer is no good. We need to dive into the details. We will also discuss BitRaser one of the best data eraser software, which will also help you to avoid data breaches. |
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In this guide, we’ll cover:
- What is a data breach?
- How do Data Breaches Take Place?
- How To Keep Your Data Safe?
- Use The Best Data Erasure Software
- Last Words
A data breach is a failure of security, during which data is copied and transmitted.
In 2020, a major data breach happened when attackers stole the personal content of 270 million users from Wattpad. The thieves then sold it on Dark Net.
Most data breaches are less spectacular and often unreported to law enforcement.
A study by Check Point Research revealed that cyberattacks increased by 28% in the third quarter of this year compared to the same period last year.
How to keep your data safe?
You need to ensure that you make the right choices. Making good choices will help keep your data safe.
How do Data Breaches Take Place?
- Physical Breach
Movies have made us think that those who steal data are always chubby hackers in a man cave on the other side of the world, who peer into three monitors and type out PHP scripts.
If your rivals wanted to steal data, they would use a much simpler method—steal a laptop from someone significant.
Then they would log in using that employee’s stored credentials and copy as much as possible before he discovered it and alerted everyone.
- Bad Employee
A careless employee who didn’t read the spoofed email correctly and sent payroll data to an outsider.
Someone who is angry with your policies, copies data and sells it at hacker forums.
These are possibly the hardest breach to prevent.
Employees are the biggest reason for a data breach.
In January 2020, hackers used the login credential of two employees to gain access to the Marriott Hotels database and steal records of 5.2 million guests. Since 2020, Marriott Hotels has suffered several high-profile breaches.
In April 2021, an IT worker by mistake deleted almost 9 million files containing evidence from the Dallas Police Department’s servers.
- Hacker Activity
Hackers can use ransomware, phishing, brute force attacks against you.
Ransomware tries to lock everyone out of a critical system. The hacker releases the system after a ransom is paid (usually using crypto currency so that it is untraceable).
Phishing happens when a link or an email is sent. The email seems to be genuine (from senders such as the power company or bank). When the user clicks the email, malware is downloaded.
Brute force attacks happen when hackers try to guess your password and gain access.
How To Keep Your Data Safe? 4 methods.
- Set Strong Passwords
While this seems to be obvious there are far too many businesses that maintain their server with a simple password like ABCDE.
Passwords are hard to remember but digital pundits tell us to use a separate password for every application.
Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Samsung, Twitter, bank accounts, share trading accounts, fitness apps, messaging apps, and radio cabs. The list of services that require a login and password is endless.
Use a password for your business that is impossible to crack.
If your password is NewYork make it N3wY0rk$@
E was substituted by 3 and O with 0. Two special characters were added to the tail.
NewYork would take 0.3 seconds to crack while N3wY0rk$@ would take 5.4 minutes.
Now, a little trick, repeat the password.
N3wY0rk$@ N3wY0rk$@ would take 67 years! Keep your data safe by using unusual combinations of upper case, lower case, numerals, and special characters.
- Educate Employees
Offer regular training sessions about data security so that your employees take it seriously and understand the steps.
A sloppy employee can cost you millions of dollars.
Provide them with the least access possible.
Set strong passwords and change passwords every week.
Enforce a written policy around data security.
There should be procedures for copying data.
A warning should be in place if an employee tries to download more than usual.
- Install Updates
Software systems are never quite fully baked.
Windows XP was launched in August 2001 and received its last security update in July 2017, full 16 years later.
There are some flaws in the millions of lines of code, no matter how much the developers tried.
Security Updates exist for discovering and rectifying these vulnerabilities.
Windows, Android, Apple, and WordPress roll out frequent updates.
Even apps can cause severe vulnerabilities.
Install updates regularly and make sure that the apps and plugins you use are compatible with the latest system updates.
Security patches ensure you fix the flaw in your systems and keep your data safe before the hacker has a chance of gaining access using it.
- Dispose of Storage Carefully
If you are anything like me, your personal laptop has details of your bank account, card account, and perhaps a saved login to your business server.
What steps did you take when you disposed of the last laptop? Sell it perhaps or exchange it for a new one.
What did you do with the hard drive?
When you replace storage media (hard drive, SSD, and USB sticks) you must ensure data erasure.
There are three ways to be 100% sure and keep your data safe.
- Wiping data in such a way that there is almost nil possibility of recovering data. A capable data eraser software such as BitRaser can overwrite the entire hard drive with 0s and then 1s. This is according to NIST 800-88 a nearly foolproof way to erase data permanently.
- Degaussing is another way. Degaussing is placing storage media in a strong electromagnetic field. The advantage of degaussing is it does not need the media to be connected through an interface and powered up.
- The surest way is to take a hammer to it. Destruction is a foolproof way, but the downside is that it contributes to e-waste.
Ensure You Use The Best Data Erasure Software
You can spend thousands of dollars training employees. Perhaps you have deployed a foolproof plan to thwart phishing.
But do you have a policy about storage media? What happens when a hard drive dies in your office? Does it casually gather dust, or is it thrown into the wastebasket?
Use top-rated data erasure software. We made BitRaser to keep your data safe from leakage into the wrong reservoirs. With BitRaser, you can be sure that any data you don’t need, can be properly and permanently deleted from a drive, beyond recovery.
BitRaser is made by Stellar Data Recovery, India’s most trusted and experienced brand in data recovery and erasure service, for 25+ years.
Some of BitRaser’s key USPs, which makes it leagues apart from similar data erasure tools, are:
- It can boot from USB and erase 32 drives at a time.
- It complies with 24+ global standards including NIST 800-88 and NATO Standard (7 passes).
- It works with SATA, PATA, NVME, and every type of interface.
- It provides a comprehensive report and a tamper-proof audit trail.
You need to locate the right kind of tools for your cyber security. What works for another enterprise is never going to fix your problems. You need to learn how to keep your data safe.
There has to be a bespoke solution that does not compete with your other policies at work.
Lowering the risk of a data breach while running a fast and flexible organization can take time, but is not unattainable.
Additional Reading: How to Choose Data Eraser Software
About The Author
Girish
Girish is a blogger and writer. He has over 6 years of experience in Data Recovery and Data Eraser technology. In his free time, he writes about technical tips and tutorials.