A recent report from the Ponemon Institute shows 43% of companies had a data breach in the last year. Here’s how you can harden your office security.

The report cites data breaches affecting as many as 20 million people in one incident.  Criminals can use many different avenues into a company’s systems to steal client, proprietary or private information which then gets sold on the black market.  Here are some ways to harden your office security:

Keep an Eye on your Hardware

Data breaches often occur in the form of viruses, trojans or malware being installed on office computers.  These infections give criminals full control of the computer, even if it doesn’t look like it on the surface.  One of the first signs of infections are high hardware usage:

Patches, Updates and Security

When Microsoft releases updates to fix security holes, anyone is able to look at the update and determine exactly which weakness was fixed.  This is why it’s important to keep your system and anti-virus updated and patched:

IT Policy Enforcement

The first line of defense for any office or individual is a proper IT policy.  This means putting in place rules on systems or as policy to office staff on how to manage data to prevent infections and data breaches.  Here are some best practices we recommend:

For more information on managed IT services that can provide 24/7 monitoring, maintenance and IT management to prevent data breaches in your office, contact your local IT professionals.

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