Corporate Data Security: Main Threats and How to Avoid Them

Data leaks are always a serious threat. And this is true not only for each individual user, but also for the corporate environment. Moreover, in the second case, the consequences can be much more serious. And this is true for companies operating in any field, regardless of their size. Data leaks can result in serious financial damage, loss of regular customers, business partners, reputation. In particularly serious cases, the consequences of such actions can even be legal liability. That is why the issue of cybersecurity and data leak prevention in particular is given significant attention today in most companies.

If you have decided to provide your business with decent security indicators when working on the Internet, you should approach the implementation of these tasks in the most comprehensive manner. It should be understood that this is not a one-time event, but a process that will continue continuously throughout your professional activity. The fact is that modern cybercriminals are constantly improving their methods, using new tools aimed at gaining access to devices in your corporate network and, as a result, stealing information that is important to them. This means that you also need to constantly be aware of current trends, regularly review existing security strategies, update them, and expand them by introducing advanced security tools. Moreover, it will be possible to ensure decent output indicators only if a comprehensive approach is implemented, involving the use of various methods.

In today's review, we will dwell in detail on what corporate data includes and why it is important to prevent its leakage. We will consider current threats and their main causes. We will provide a number of recommendations, using which in practice you can significantly increase the security level of your corporate system. The information provided will allow you to minimize possible risks and ensure the stable operation of your business even in the face of increased threats from hackers.

What is corporate data

Corporate data is internal business information that is shared between different departments and representative offices of the same organization in the course of professional activities. Such an asset can rightfully be called one of the most important, since it reflects all the specifics of business activities hidden from third parties. All data can be divided into internal and external types, including all existing resources, processes and internal standards on the basis of which the organization operates. If this data ends up in the hands of third-party interested parties, the consequences may be too serious for the business.

In order to minimize all possible risks of data loss, and at the same time reduce the negative financial consequences, modern businesses make serious efforts and invest significant resources in ensuring the security of their information. Unfortunately, it is not possible to identify the line, crossing which representatives of small and medium-sized businesses should scale their work in the context of improving cybersecurity. This largely depends on the specifics of the company's activities, the intensity with which it is growing. This issue will be especially relevant for organizations that are expanding territorially, opening new representative offices in other regions. Here, the requirements for ensuring information security will be more serious than for a business operating in one office and having one information security department. At the same time, the technologies that can be used to ensure data security are becoming more complex.

Among the key indicators that are typical for most corporate information, it is worth highlighting:

• Security. This is ensured by organizing ubiquitous controlled access and multi-level authorization.
• Quality. This assumes compliance with all current standards for any type of data, regardless of their standards, maintaining their accuracy and usefulness for business.
• Integration. Involves maintaining a single, pre-agreed version of corporate data, as well as making it available to staff across the entire organization in accordance with existing access rights.
• Scalability. Involves adapting data systems to changing business needs while maintaining their sustainability, flexibility, efficiency, and stability.
• Efficiency. Involves minimizing errors and redundancy in activities performed by revising the existing data management and modeling strategy. Involves organizing constant and stable access for all users to the latest agreed corporate information.

And one of the most important tasks facing modern business is to ensure the implementation of all these indicators. This is the only way to create the necessary conditions for the effective and stable development of the company. Now we are betting directly on the problem of data leakage, that is, on information security.

Why should we pay special attention to the fight against data leaks?

Data leakage is the aspect that is constantly monitored by intruders. Today, there is a fairly impressive category of cybercriminals who constantly monitor the accounts of people with higher access rights to corporate information in order to catch them in some mistake, careless action, which could open up opportunities for them to obtain valuable information.

If this happens within the framework of your business, hackers can gain access to confidential information, including financial documentation, trade secrets, personal data of your employees, as well as all the information that you would like to reliably hide from any third-party access. However, not all attackers will wait for a case when management positions or administrators make a mistake and thereby open up opportunities to gain access to corporate information. This is why cyber attacks are undertaken. And it does not matter what method the hacker used to obtain the data - the result is the same: an outsider has gained access to extremely important and sensitive information of your business.

And what will happen next with your corporate data? Alternatively, they can go under the hammer and fall into the hands of your competitors. Attackers can publish them on the Internet, thereby opening free access to anyone who wants it. The possibility of blackmail and extortion cannot be ruled out. That is, in any case, the information that you wanted to hide from outsiders will be in the public domain. And clearly, all this will not bring any positive result for the further development of your business. The damage can be tangible not only for small businesses, but also for large corporations. That is why everyone should know what threats are relevant to their business and understand how to, if not prevent them, then at least minimize them.

Current threats to corporate information

Any modern company assumes the presence of an impressive number of local corporate networks, structural systems of different levels. And for each such solution, uniform regulations must be developed, compliance with which will ensure internal data security. But in practice, it is not so easy to implement this, since the work ahead is quite large-scale. And this means that their implementation will require a lot of effort, time, and material investments.

Unfortunately, human resources alone are not enough to carry out such tasks. It is very important to understand what information security is and understand the tools with which it can be ensured. But still, it will require the use of specialized software, appropriate equipment that can increase the efficiency of these works. Also, we must not forget that attackers are constantly monitoring market trends and expanding their capabilities. This means that the number of threats is constantly increasing. The methods that hackers use are constantly improving and becoming more complex, which in turn will also require information security specialists to be more highly qualified and take an unconventional approach.

And one of the main difficulties here is that it is difficult to predict where this threat will come from. This is especially true for companies that do not have a separate information infrastructure at their disposal. This can safely include organizations that are engaged in manufacturing and trading activities. Here you need to be more wary of external threats than competitors and insiders. But larger companies, let's say, mid-level, will be more exposed to threats from competitors than global hacker groups. If you actively use an electronic payment service, which is relevant for all companies that sell goods or services via the Internet, then you should be wary of not only losing corporate information, but also money.

But still, the main risk of losing data confidentiality is the human factor. Practice shows that the level of security of corporate networks in most modern businesses leaves much to be desired. And this means that there are shortcomings in the information security department. To eliminate such problems and ensure reliable security of corporate data, the relevant specialists need to:

• use applications that can increase the security of internal business processes for each user, prevent failures and system failures;
• make the company's websites and other online representations constantly accessible to the company's clients, but at the same time minimize the likelihood of DDoS attacks;
• ensure reliable protection of the most important information for the business, prevent its theft as a result of the work of insiders, and protect against external attacks. In particular, we are talking about customer databases, which very often migrate from one business to another, along with sales managers;
• maintain the integrity of information even in the event of external interference: this will become a serious problem during the audit of financial statements, since it is at this stage that interference in the structure of financial and accounting data is most often detected.

In parallel with this, several information security risks are identified depending on the mechanisms on which they are implemented. Thus, today malware is very often used. These are the so-called encryptors, Trojans that are launched on user devices. substitution of credentials, phishing emails, spam, denial of service, DDoS attacks, substitution of the main page of the site, third-party unauthorized connections to communication channels in order to intercept data packets can also be used.

To prevent such problems, information security specialists need to use organizational, software and technical solutions. For large corporations with a huge number of employees, insider threats will be the most relevant. This means that the bet is primarily on organizational measures. That is, it is important to prevent the incident itself, and not think about how to minimize the consequences and spend time, effort, resources on internal investigations.

Now we will dwell in more detail on the reasons for which data leaks most often occur at present. Knowing your vulnerabilities will help you minimize these risks.

The most common causes of data leaks

A corporate data leak is a problem that can occur for various reasons. But if you understand where the danger may come from, you can prevent serious problems. The main mistakes that are most often encountered in practice today in the field of corporate data security include:

1. Incorrect selection of software, incompetent approach to security settings. A high risk of compromise is possible if an employee of the information security department or another person who is entrusted with certain responsibilities does not competently approach the selection of appropriate software solutions or does not implement these works at all.
2. The presence of vulnerabilities in the software used. It should be understood that as soon as a breach in the security system of certain applications appears, their developers try to eliminate such a vulnerability as quickly as possible. As a result, an updated version of the software is released that has protection against the problem. If you do not regularly update your software to the latest version on site, you will not be able to resist growing threats, including leaks of important information.
3. Social engineering. This is when attackers manipulate and outright deceive people into disclosing confidential information. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to regularly inform your staff about existing threats and current techniques. Otherwise, your employees, without knowing it, will give away your business's confidential information to attackers.
4. Insider threats. They are often associated with the privileges of certain employees of your company. Perhaps, many of you now find it difficult to imagine that a person who has worked in your company for many years, has earned increased trust from you, can at one moment follow the lead of attackers or unscrupulous competitors, often for a fairly impressive amount of money, and give away all the data they have on your business. But reality shows that such a practice is very common today.
5. Physical theft. Today, when the main focus of business is on digital security, attention to hardware security has significantly decreased. And here it is important not to forget that almost every computer is equipped with a USB port. This means that it is quite easy to download secret information to a flash drive through it. Unfortunately, in practice there are cases when intruders take laptops and computer system units out of work places. What's the point then if your system is protected? Hackers will simply download all the data they need directly from the drive. This means that you should not neglect the security of physical devices.
6. Using malware. To gain access to your software, intruders launch a virus program on your work computer that is capable of collecting data from the inside, like a mole. Various options are used to implement such ideas, including ransomware, keyloggers, network worms, infostealers, etc. Moreover, modern hackers have technologies at their disposal that work as covertly as possible. It may take years until your system administrator notices the problem. And all this time, your confidential information will be constantly downloaded and, as an option, transferred to competitors.
7. Use of weak passwords by staff. Many do not use multifactor authentication because it involves a combination of several connection methods. This is additional effort and time. But for the security of your business, it is still worth using it, supplementing it with more complex passwords containing at least 12 or even 20 characters.
8. Hidden phishing. This is one of the hacker attacks, which is most often carried out by sending you an email containing a hidden request for financial information. Initially, such a letter looks quite natural, since it is often sent on behalf of one of your business partners, colleagues, or any other person known in your company. But if you open it, the malicious code will get onto your computer and cause serious damage.
9. Using personal gadgets for work purposes. Experience shows that company employees also very often store work documentation, including quite important ones, on their personal smartphones and tablets. These devices, like other physical hardware, can be subject to compromise or physical theft. Make sure that your staff approaches the protection of their personal gadgets as comprehensively and professionally as possible.
10. Organizing a remote work environment. Monitoring the actions of employees working remotely is much more difficult than that of regular full-time staff. Here, a personal device is used, often unlicensed software. Connections to public Wi-Fi networks with questionable reliability indicators are often encountered. And the loss of confidential data in this case will definitely happen, sooner or later.

So what can be done to ensure the protection of corporate data from leaks?

How to prevent data leaks: effective modern practices

To effectively combat cyber threats, the modern IT technology market offers quite a lot of solutions. But most of them are based on 7 basic rules, which can rightfully be called the basis of any network security. If you use them in practice, you will be able to minimize all the dangers and threats, ensuring stable and confident development of your business. So, we are talking about the following aspects:

1. Assessing the risks when interacting with third-party organizations. Most modern businesses work in cooperation with other manufacturers, suppliers, and have partners. And it's good if these are people you can trust 100%. Otherwise, you risk losing your data, that is, if you transfer it to an unreliable person or organization. Therefore, before launching new business interactions, check whether your potential partner complies with the current security standards, in particular HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS. You can use risk questionnaires to evaluate new partners. In parallel with scaling your business, you also need to expand risk management by creating a separate managed service.
2. Implement an access control system for work devices. This is necessary to ensure the protection of your local networks from unauthorized users. It is in your interests to check all messages that come to you from the outside. Here, it is necessary to implement solutions that will eliminate the compromise of information and thereby ensure high security indicators for important data. Today, there are already quite a few solutions for network access control designed to prohibit connection to any devices by persons who do not have the appropriate permissions. Computers where especially important information will be stored will be under reliable protection.
3. Form access rights to confidential data in your company. That is, you must select a certain group of people who will receive the appropriate access rights. These should not only be people whose professional duties require such permissions. You should bet on people whose reliability and responsibility you are completely confident in. That is, you need to form security policy lines and limit the privileges of your employees depending on their responsibilities. As a result, only those people who need it to maintain the operation of your business will have access to critical data. All these actions can be significantly simplified in the case of additional connection of advanced authentication and permissions assessment systems. This way, you minimize unauthorized access and ensure that only those with the highest level of privileges can use highly sensitive data.
4. Ensure high end-user security. In this case, we are talking about physical devices that connect to your local network, in particular, your staff's computers, server equipment, printers, virtual machines, Internet of Things hardware, etc. Due to the fact that recently many devices are connected to the corporate network from the outside, that is, as part of remote work, control over endpoints has become much more complicated. But today, there are already software tools here that are designed to provide decent security indicators. For example, this can be a reliable antivirus program or other software, including for VPN servers, firewalls. Most of these tools are combined with each other, which allows you to get the maximum result in practice.
5. Enable reliable data encryption. This is a fairly powerful tool that can provide good protection against data leaks. We are talking about ensuring encryption of confidential data. In the event that intruders manage to gain access to such information, they simply will not be able to use it, since they will not decrypt it. But in this case, it is worth using an encryption protocol that will comply with current security standards. Recently, so-called portable encryption has been gaining popularity. Its main advantage is that the protection of any data is guaranteed automatically if it gets into the external environment. It turns out that in the local network, corporate information will be freely available, and when it goes beyond its limits, it will be encrypted without additional instructions.
6. Connect a special application designed to prevent data loss to work. One of the most striking examples of software in this category is DLP, or Data Loss Prevention. Its responsibilities include ensuring and preserving confidential data, preventing its misuse, and transfer to third parties who do not have the appropriate access rights. The program takes on data identification and optimization of work processes using artificial intelligence. High data protection rates in DLP systems involve providing data in accordance with built-in privacy policies. It also has a mechanism for tracking end-user behavior that controls data transfer between authorized points in real time. DLP also works with archived data, controls access to it and additional encryption, monitors active data, tracking suspicious actions, and monitors all channels through which data leakage is possible. In the latter case, if a violation is detected, the system will either stop the process on its own or send a corresponding notification to the administrator.
7. Constantly train your staff, telling them about current threats, as well as the measures they can independently implement to prevent them. It should be understood that it is employees who do not delve into corporate security issues who are more susceptible to social engineering tools, such as phishing mailings and other similar methods. That is, make it a rule to conduct training sessions regularly, talk about the tactics that attackers use to gain access to corporate data. This approach will pay off in practice, since the staff will know where they should expect a threat from and in what format it can come.

As you can see, the rules are quite simple both to understand and to implement. Do not neglect them, so as not to risk the security of your corporate network and confidential business information as a whole.

Summing up

Protecting corporate data from leaks is not just a corresponding mark in the list of tasks that your information security department will face. This is a task that requires an effective and comprehensive solution, constant vigilance, control over current trends, including the tools that hackers use to gain access to devices on your network. In the context of an ever-increasing volume of data and improving cyber threats, this issue is becoming more relevant than ever. Only with its correct implementation can you ensure the quality, integration, scalability, efficiency and integrity of data, which we discussed at the beginning of the review. This is what will become the basis for the continuous and stable operation of your business.

If you put into practice the recommendations we have provided, you will be able to create a corporate data protection system that will be distinguished by increased resistance to hacker attacks and failures in operation. To summarize all that we have said above, we will highlight the following points:

• use permanent solutions such as encryption, multi-factor authentication, access control in accordance with the allocated rights, that is, take a comprehensive approach to the implementation of the issue;
• conduct regular training of personnel in order to inform them about advanced security tools, which will allow them to avoid potential threats and counter them;
• set up regular backups of important corporate documentation, which will ensure its emergency recovery in case of loss or ransomware;
• use special services to automatically monitor the system and instantly respond to abnormal behavior, thereby identifying unauthorized connections.

A universal means of ensuring high security indicators when working on the Internet for both private and corporate users will be the use of mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service. Some will provide reliable concealment of the IP-address of each individual device. Without knowing this parameter, intruders will not be able to access it even if they have a great desire. In addition, you are guaranteed high confidentiality when working on the network, bypassing regional restrictions and gaining access to sites from any country in the world. And you can also use programs that automate similar and routine work, organize multi-accounting without the risk of running into a ban and other restrictions from the system.

You can learn more about what mobile proxies are at the link https://mobileproxy.space/en/user.html?buyproxy. You will also have at your disposal a free two-hour testing and a competent technical support service that works around the clock, including holidays and weekends.

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