Can You Prevent Data Breaches? Best Data Breach Protection Practices

You can prevent data breaches by taking several steps, including implementing security compliance, including the V.E.S. T. Protect Compliance Program.

The Very Essential Security Tactics help protect your business’s data and include policies and procedures, risk reduction, breach reporting, document destruction, improved compliance and a privacy self-assessment.

Start by completing the self-assessment data privacy questionnaire. We'll give you our recommendations, including remediation instructions for your specific situation, draft policies and best practices regarding compliance, security, incident response planning, and conduct an audit. You’ll also have access 24 hours per day, seven days per week for regular input and monitoring.

Combining the V.E.S.T. program with security compliance will also show you how to prevent data breach by giving you best practices to prevent data breach situations.

What Does Data Breach Mean?

A data breach can be physical or digital. Someone within the company can steal information from physical files or computer files, while outside hackers can get access to your digital files. Stolen or weak credentials allow hackers to easily access your network, and then worm their way into your databases. Malware destroys authentication steps. Card skimmers skim customer information and allow hackers access to additional customer data. Even employees with unsecured devices can unknowingly download malicious malware through the work email or cloud system.

What Should a Company Do After a Data Breach?

Once a company has been breached, it must notify its customers of the breach. The company will most likely face fines after a breach. You must find and close the breach as soon as possible. Shred America’s V.E.S.T. program can help find and stop a breach. If the breach was of physical files, Shred America has shredding programs that include locked shred boxes so that your files are locked, whether they are in a filing cabinet or are waiting to be shredded.

Common Causes of Data Breaches

Most people assume that a data breach comes from someone on the outside, but that is not always the case. Common causes of data breaches include those working inside, whether they purposefully steal the data or they read files without permission. Even though a person who accidentally accesses data doesn’t share it, it’s still considered a breach since that person was not authorized to view it.

Employees could steal or even lose devices assigned to them or other employees. Even if an employee mistakenly loses a device, such as a USB storage stick, or if someone leaves their work laptop unsecured, the sensitive information could get into the wrong hands. And, of course, you have the outside hackers who steal data to use it for their own benefit or sell it to others, usually on the dark net.

How to Prevent Data Breach

You can prevent a data breach by ensuring that your security is up to date, your employees are trained in data security practices and by having physical documents and digital storage media shredded at the end of their retention time. We will come to your business or your home to shred your documents and old data storage devices, including hard drives, USB drives, CDs and DVDs. Just make that initial phone call to set up an appointment for the services you need.

Contacting Shred America for Shredding Services

When you contact us for shredding services, find the location nearest you via the location tab on our page. Choose your location and then give us a call to discuss your shredding needs, whether you need one-time shredding or you need us to help you determine a schedule and deliver locked shred boxes to your location.