How Can Employees Prevent Data Breaches Within Organisations?

A data breach can be a costly thing to have to deal with as an employer, not just because of the financial implications but also the time they take away from other business activities. If you handle the personal data of your clients or employees, you might like to know, ‘How can employees prevent data breaches?’

Data protection law requires you to take all the necessary steps to protect personal data if you handle or process it. Therefore, you should update your cyber security measures and provide staff with data protection training.

Below, we will discuss how data breaches could occur if these necessary measures aren’t implemented and the steps that employees can take to prevent a data breach from occurring.

Additionally, as part of our services, we can help assess the eligibility of data breach compensation claims and connect eligible claimants with one of our No Win No Fee solicitors. To chat with our team, you can:

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Choose/Select/Jump To A Section or Browse Our Guide

  1. What Is A Data Breach?
  2. How Can Employees Prevent Data Breaches?
  3. How Else Can You Prevent Data Breach Incidents?
  4. Read More About Data Breaches

What Is A Data Breach?

As an employer, you will hold personal information for both staff and customers, which could include someone’s:

  • Name.
  • Address.
  • National Insurance Number.
  • Email address.

Personal data is any information that could be used to identify someone, either directly or indirectly in combination with other information.

Depending on the nature of your business, you may also process special category data. This is classed as sensitive data and, therefore, requires more protection. Some examples of data that is classed as special category include any information regarding:

As a data controller (someone who decides how and why data is being processed) or data processor (someone who processes data on behalf of the controller), you are required to follow the rules set out within the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and the UK General Data Protection Regulations (UK GDPR). This is because these legislations sit together to form data protection law.

If you fail to adhere to these laws, this could lead to your organisation suffering a data breach.

A data breach is a security event that affects the confidentiality, integrity or availability of personal data.

If your organisation suffers a data breach due to data protection laws not being adhered to, and this leads to an employee or client suffering financial or emotional harm due to their personal data being compromised, they have a right to claim for the data breach.

A digital security system.

How Can A Data Breach Happen?

There are many ways a data breach can happen within your organisation, and some examples include:

  • If you have inadequate cyber security and fall victim to a cyber attack.
  • Clicking on a phishing email that steals personal data or information.
  • Leaving data unsecured (not properly stored or locked away) so that unauthorised people can access it.
  • Failure to use BBC in emails.
  • Verbally disclosing personal data without a lawful basis for doing so.
  • Weak passwords.
  • Unsecured networks.

Of course, there are many more ways a breach could happen, and we cannot list every eventuality. The examples above should give you some idea of what you should be aware of as a business.

A hacker stealing someone's personal data.

How Can Employees Prevent Data Breaches?

Preventing data breaches can feel like an uphill battle with constant updates and things like new viruses appearing regularly. It is, therefore, important as an employer that your employees know what they can do to prevent a data breach from happening in the first place.

If you are wondering, ‘How can employees prevent data breaches?’, some examples include:

  • The employees in the IT department could regularly update cybersecurity measures to reduce the risk of cyber attackers and hackers accessing personal data.
  • Being vigilant when opening links from unknown sources and preferably scanning them with antivirus software thus not creating security breaches.
  • Refraining from using file-sharing websites whilst at work.
  • Redacting personal information when appropriate.
  • The use of strong passwords and multi-factor authentication.
  • Regularly changing passwords.
  • Spotting and reporting suspicious online activity.
  • Not leaving data so it is vulnerable to being stolen, e.g. a USB drive in a bag left unattended.

If you fail to implement the necessary measures to protect personal data, causing someone to suffer distress due to the data breach, you could be considered liable for the data breach.

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How Else Can You Prevent Data Breach Incidents?

Now that we’ve looked at how can employees prevent data breaches, there are steps that you could take as a business owner or manager to help further prevent data breaches from occurring within your organisation. These are:

Remember To Create And Update Procedures

It is a good idea to have a procedure in place for data security and the standards you expect. This should also be updated regularly to make sure that you are as safe as possible. There is also the bonus of setting the right tone with your staff, i.e. that data is something to be taken seriously by all employees.

In addition, you can consider getting software that allows for different levels of permission when viewing online documents or having certain websites or domains blocked when using work computers. Be proactive, and this will help you in the long run.

Remote Monitoring

This provides around-the-clock monitoring of your network. You do not need IT staff to be working at all times, as there are managed IT services and intrusion detection systems that can do this for you.

Data Backup And Recovery

Loss of data can also be a data breach. It could be the case that someone, through a virus or computer program, deletes your data. Data can also be lost due to physical damage such as in a fire or natural disaster. Server damage is also a possibility. 

For these reasons it is wise that your IT team backs up your data. This will protect you from irrecoverable data loss.

Safeguard Physical Data

It is important to remember that physical actions can cause data breaches. This could include paperwork and physical files. If they are not secured adequately then unauthorised persons could gain access to them. To help protect physical data, such as paper files, you could lock these away in a filing cabinet that only authorised personnel can unlock, for example.

Protect Portable Devices

You could have data stored on a portable device such as a laptop, external hard drive, or flash drive. These devices need to be protected as if they fall into the wrong hands, they could be accessed if they are not password protected or have anti-theft software installed. Remember, staff will, at times, take these devices out of the office, which can increase risk. Password-protecting these portable devices and instructing staff to be cautious when transporting them could help with data breach prevention.

Read More About Data Breaches

Additional data breach guides by us:

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We hope we have answered ‘How can employees prevent data breaches?’. If your data has been breached by an organisation or one you work for, you can contact our advisors to see how we could help you.