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Three Main Motives That Threaten Your Data
Data loss and privacy breaches can happen anytime, anywhere. And too often, people fail to prepare themselves adequately because they never believe it will happen to them.
To protect yourself from these threats, you must first get to know the enemy. At a very broad level, three main categories of threats could potentially harm your data at some point in the near future. These include Malice, Human Error, and Acts of “God”.
- Malice — The world will always have some people who want to destroy or expose your data. Malicious attacks are the leading motivator of data breaches, privacy leaks, and identity theft. As we saw with recent hacks at major corporations such as Target, even large companies struggle to combat determined criminals with bad intentions.
- Human Error — People are the weakest link in any chain of security. They share inappropriate information on social media networks. They leave their laptops behind when traveling. They also take part in risky activities such as sharing passwords, opening questionable email attachments, or installing plugins from disreputable websites.
- Acts of “God” — Fire, floods, and other natural disasters can destroy the physical IT infrastructure of any company. Physical hardware failure can also arise from daily wear & tear, or manufacturing defects. You can’t control these events, but you can prepare for them.
Outlined above are three important reasons for every company to address data privacy and integrity.
Failure to protect data can have serious consequences for organizations. It can hurt the company’s reputation, lead to lawsuits, and destroy customer relationships that took years to build.
Having a strong anti-virus and firewall is important. But these are not 100% effective. Having a proper backup and disaster recovery process in place should come first before all other IT security measures since backups are the only 100% guaranteed way to protect data from destruction. Backups are a fundamental concept that should serve as the foundation of your overall IT security process, to stay protected against the 3 motives that threaten your data.