Advice On How To Protect Your Company From A Data Breach

A breach in data protection can cause far-reaching issues for your company and staff. A serious data breach can ruin an organisation, so it’s never been more important to understand what actions you can take to stop your firm from falling victim. This guide offers a wealth of useful information and tips on how to protect your company from a data breach.

We will explain the correct way to respond to either the threat of or an actual data breach. We will examine different types of data breaches that can impact companies in detail. After this, we will offer some data breach examples to help illustrate possible scenarios.

At Data Breach Compensation Expert we can connect those affected by a data breach, such as employees of a company, with solicitors to help them claim compensation. They have wide-ranging expertise in this area, so if you’d like to chat over your concerns right now, simply connect with our dedicated advisors:

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Choose A Section 

  1. How To Protect Your Company From A Data Breach
  2. How Should A Company Respond To A Data Breach?
  3. What Are The Different Types Of Data Breaches?
  4. What Are Examples Of Business Data Breaches?
  5. More Resources Related To Data Breaches

How To Protect Your Company From A Data Breach

Here in the UK, we have stringent data protection laws that set out the rules and regulations all organisations who process personal data must adhere to. These include the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

So, if your business processes personal data, you must examine how to protect your company from a data breach and implement ways in which to do so to be compliant with the law. This also applies if you are just processing the personal data of employees (such as for payroll, employment records and disciplinary information) as well as customer data.

There are some practices you can follow to limit the risk of a data breach affecting your business. This section looks at some of the ways you can prevent data breaches in your company:

Elevate Your Security Procedures

Firstly, it can help to look at your current data security measures. Putting multiple layers of defence in place is the best way to create a robust defence. Cybercriminals would then need to get through several safeguards in order to access the data. Therefore, you can:

  • Implement firewalls, encryption and other file-sharing security software.
  • Install antivirus software designed especially for companies.
  • Implement these measures even if using a cloud-based storage service that offers built-in security tools.
  • Limit access to employees only. You can further limit access to personal and sensitive data to only those who need it.
  • Create multifactor authentication and single sign-on access.
  • Back up your company’s data regularly.

Train Your Employees About How To Handle Personal Data

Employees need to understand data protection procedures and policies in order to adhere to them. It is vital that any employee with personal data access has data security training. This includes preventing incidents that can occur digitally as well as with paper records and files, over the phone or by losing devices. All companies whether a large organisation or small business with only a few employees must ensure that staff are adequately trained to protect data. 

Helpful guidance for to prevent a data breach at work includes:

  • Implementing a ‘clean desk’ policy so that files are securely stored and not visible.
  • Ensuring staff understand the retention policy and that documents are securely shredded on time.
  • Hire a service to collect documents for shredding if you cannot do so yourself.
  • Teach employees the risks of phishing and other examples of email and digital scams.

Learn How The Data Breach Happened

It’s very important to find out when and how the data breach occurred to prevent further security breaches. If it occurred digitally through cybercrime, you can adjust cybersecurity measures accordingly to prevent it from happening again in the future. If it occurred through human error, you may need to provide your staff with further data security training.

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How Should A Company Respond To A Data Breach?

When considering how to protect your company from a data breach, it’s useful to know how to respond after one happens. After a data breach, a company should:

  • Report the breach to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO enforce data protection legislation. Certain breaches need to be reported to the ICO within 72 hours of awareness. For example, if the data breach could result in discrimination, reputation damage, financial loss or social disadvantage and loss of confidentiality. If there’s a delay, a reason must be given.
  • Act swiftly to halt the damage and prevent follow-up threats.
  • Report the breach to the data subjects involved without undue delay if the incident could cause a high risk to their freedoms and rights.

Additional steps your organisation could take following a data breach to help minimise the impacts or prevent a breach from occurring again the future include:

  • Protect any physical locations that might be connected to the breach, such as storage cabinets and tech areas. 
  • If necessary, seek outside advice from a group of cyber forensic professionals. They can carry out a thorough breach response, gather proof and take pictures of the systems, as well as present a plan for repairing the data breach.
  • Update all passwords and login information for authorised users. The system could still be vulnerable if log-ins and other credentials were stolen.
  • Delete any information that was posted online incorrectly. For example, if your company website was included in the data breach. You can check that search engines have not accidentally archived falsely posted information by contacting them.
  • Check that your breached data has not been saved on a website elsewhere. If discovered, contact those websites and request it be taken down.

You may also wish to seek advice from a legal professional. They can assess whether you are liable for the data breach and what steps you could take next if a data breach claim is made against you. 

What Are The Different Types Of Data Breaches? 

A company data breach can occur in a number of ways. These can be deliberate or accidental and occur digitally, online or off or relate to paper records containing personal data. Some examples of how data breaches happen include:

  • Malicious attacks – These can happen because of gaps and glitches in a storage cloud software or because of third-party password vulnerabilities. They can involve leaked or stolen data that hackers could sell on the dark web.
  • Phishing – Attacks from third-party hackers posing as legitimate sites asking for you to input personal data.
  • Ransomware attacks – This is when a cybercriminal holds stolen data from the company for ransom and financial gain.
  • Malware / Viruses- When viruses are sent to other systems or websites to destroy information.
  • Human theft – When an employee takes data and exploits it for personal gain. Password guessing is another activity that can cause a data breach.
  • Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) – This is when an aggrieved party targets usually large companies as a form of protest. By temporarily halting employee access to the system, it can adversely impact the business.
  • Human error- A security breach could occur even if your employees are accurately trained in data protection. For example, a telephone receptionist may discuss personal data in hearing range of a member of the public.

What Are Examples Of Business Data Breaches?

When thinking about how to protect your company from a data breach, it can be useful to bear in mind the real-world consequences that some organisations have suffered. For instance:

  • In August 2013, hackers accessed 3 billion Yahoo accounts and although they were not able to steal funds, they did obtain the answers to security questions. This happened because of gaps in IT security during a merger.
  • Facebook experienced a data breach in April 2019 that affected approximately 530 million users. Their personal data was posted freely online.

(Resources:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41493494 and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56815478 )

If your personal data has been breached by the company you work for and this has caused you mental or financial harm, we may be able to help you with making a claim for compensation. Contact our team today by:

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More Resources Related To Data Breaches

We’ve also included some helpful resources:

External links:

Thanks for reading our guide on how to protect your company from a data breach. Please get in touch to see how we could help you if your personal data was breached by a company you work for.