7 Great Ways to Secure Your Business After a Data Breach

In May 2022, over 49 million records were breached. If you have fallen victim to a cyber-attack resulting in a data breach, you need to use all the resources at your disposal to secure your business and prevent another breach. Data breaches can be financially devastating to a business and strain your relationship with stakeholders and clients.

Keep reading for the complete guide to the top methods to secure your business after a data breach. This guide will cover the best practices to ensure that only authorized users can access your physical and digital resources.

How to secure your business after a data breach?

If you have suffered a data breach, you must place all your efforts into preventing future violations. If you fail to adapt your security strategy and reduce vulnerabilities in your system, you could suffer further financial losses and lose the trust of your stakeholders. Here, we will discuss the best security practices and steps you can take to reduce the likelihood of future breaches.

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1. MFA, identity verification, and biometrics

Access control secures your building from intruders. Touchless access control is a cloud-based technology that uses mobile credentials as digital access keys. Users can enter with a wave of their hand and trigger remote WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular communication with mobile devices to open doors. Door locks can be operated remotely using a cloud-based control center or mobile application. This cloud-based technology allows security staff to respond more quickly to security threats and incidents.

With every access control solution, however, comes one major vulnerability. If a third party or unauthorized user intercepts access credentials, they can use these credentials to gain access to your building and sensitive data. If you wish to prevent this from happening, you should consider implementing multi-factor authentication at your building’s entrances.

You can use a video intercom system to implement multi-factor authentication at your building’s entrance. Access control and camera systems for businesses can be integrated with video intercom systems that have features such as built-in touchless door entry, high-definition video, and voice recognition. Access logs and video feed information will be readily available on one interface to help your staff verify the identity of users quickly. You can integrate this technology with facial recognition software to automate the identity verification process and ensure that only authorized users can gain access to your building.

2. Integrate cyber and physical security

With a cloud-based security system, cybersecurity is essential to prevent physical security breaches. The remote features of your access control system should only be available to authorized users. This is why you should implement cybersecurity software to protect your physical security system and ensure that it does not become compromised.

You must also ensure that the identity of authorized users is confirmed when accessing these remote features, and you can restrict access to these features to ensure that only on-site users can access these remote features. By implementing these restrictions, you can reduce the likelihood of an internal security breach.

Your physical security technologies are instrumental in keeping your on-site digital assets secure. A cyber-physical security strategy helps you protect your physical and digital assets in a cohesive and blended approach to security.

3. Provide employees with training to prevent further breaches

Human error is responsible for a significant portion of cybersecurity breaches. If you invest in the best security tools on the market, only to suffer a security breach due to human error, this will undercut your security investments. To ensure your security investments are effective, you must ensure your employees know the best cybersecurity practices. Some basic cybersecurity training for your employees includes:

• Password creation: Many employees and internet users still use weak passwords and reuse old ones. To ensure your system is secure, you must instruct your employees on the importance of strong password creation and provide training on how to set strong passwords.
• Software updates: Software updates remove any existing vulnerabilities in the older software versions. For this reason, it is prudent to keep all software updated to its most current version. So, if your employees are using their own devices to access your network, instruct them on the importance of keeping software updated on personal and company devices.
• Spotting untrustworthy sources: Phishing scams, malware, and ransomware can make their way into your sensitive data if your employees do not know how to spot suspicious activity. Train your employees on how to spot phishing scams and how to verify sources before revealing any personal information.

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4. Conduct regular cyber and physical security penetration testing

To keep your security strategy air-tight, you must be aware of your system’s vulnerabilities and develop new approaches to reduce and eliminate these vulnerabilities. To do this, you must perform regular cyber and physical security penetration testing that will reveal the risks in your current system.

5. Prevent internal security breaches with Zero Trust

If you’re looking to secure your business after a data breach, you need to reduce the risk of internal security breaches. Zero Trust is a cybersecurity policy that applies to your network and the permissions each user gains. The trustworthiness of every user on the network cannot be assumed. This is why it’s important to ensure that every user can only access the resources they need for daily operations, and nothing more.

This way, if there is an internal security breach, only a limited amount of information will be compromised. Zero Trust is particularly important if your employees use their own devices for work and take devices home. When your employees access company data on their home network, the data is vulnerable. Zero Trust helps to reduce your risk when employees access company information on their home network.

Zero Trust doesn’t just apply to your cybersecurity strategy. You can apply Zero Trust to your physical security strategy, too. The trustworthiness of every employee, visitor, contractor, and interviewee on the premises cannot be assumed. Any areas within the building that house sensitive company assets and data should be restricted. You can restrict these areas using smart door locks that will not make it inconvenient for the staff who frequent these areas.

6. Invest in visitor management software

In the event of a security breach, you need to know who has accessed your property. If you use logbooks and manual reception protocols, visitors and contractors may not sign in properly and may forget to sign out. Having a detailed log of your visitors makes the investigation of security breaches infinitely simpler.

Visitor management software integrates with your access control system to provide digital registration forms for your visitors. Your visitors cannot enter the building until they have filled out the digital form. Once they have filled out the form, they will be able to enter the building using temporary access credentials stored on their mobile device. When they leave the building, the system automatically signs them out and revokes their temporary access credentials. By automating the visitor management process, you can have more accurate visitor logs and a clearer picture of who is in your building at any given time.

7. AI and video surveillance

One of the best ways to prevent future data breaches in your business is to have a swift and effective response to security threats. However, a swift and effective response requires your security team to be aware of any security threats on the property at all times.

Surveillance systems usually have two main functions – they help to deter crime, and they help to provide evidence in an investigation once a crime has already occurred. But what if you could enhance your surveillance system to help your security team prevent crime?

Your security team is unable to consistently monitor your surveillance feed, which is necessary to spot any potential security threats or incidents on the property. This could be for a few reasons:

• They have other duties and tasks to attend to.
• Or there are too many security cameras to observe at one time.

Your security team needs to be aware of any security threats on your property at all times. You can ensure this by investing in AI integrated with surveillance technology. If your security team is attending to other on-site tasks and the system detects a security threat, they will receive an alert on their mobile device that allows them to spring into action and resolve the matter quickly. If you want to enhance your surveillance system to actually help prevent a security breach, you should consider investing in AI integrated with video surveillance.

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Summary

When your business falls victim to a security breach, you need to ensure that this breach does not occur again. Failing to adapt your security strategy and remove weaknesses in your system will result in losing the trust of your clients and stakeholders and could have highly negative consequences for your businesses. Consider these security tips and best practices in line with your current strategy to reduce the likelihood of another breach.