How Startups Can Protect Against Identity and Financial Theft

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How Startups Can Protect Against Identity and Financial Theft

Identity theft as a result of leaked company data makes the headlines every now and then. The magnitude of corporate identity theft as well as the fallout big brands and organization suffered in the past have made theft detection and prevention the foremost concern for corporate America, and startups in particular.

Startups handle enormous amounts of personal data, which places them squarely in the crosshairs of hackers. It’s common knowledge that many of the startups today may not have the best security measures guarding their website or servers. That’s because a lot of startups today focus on growth as opposed to trivialities like website security. Therefore, they make attractive targets for hackers crawling the dark parts of the internet.

Even though awareness of breaches in website security is at an all-time high, hackers are coming up with unique ways to get in behind firewalls and scoop large volumes of financial data. That makes the work of a network security professional all the more demanding because he has to keep up with every new hack.

However, you don’t have to employ a hoard of network security experts to guard your startup from prying eyes. You can take several conscious steps to thwart any attempts at accessing the private files without authorization. Here’s how you can stop hackers in their tracks without investing a significant amount of your capital in network security.

Thwarting Identity Theft in Your Startup

  1. Educate Employees on How to Handle Sensitive Files

Your business is only as secure as its weakest link, and most of the time, your weakest link is your staff. You may have the latest firewall software protecting your financial records, identity fraud insurance but a hacker doesn’t have to get around the server if he can get the password to your servers from the staff. It doesn’t take a lot of work to get people to share sensitive information such as passwords with you. In fact, you’d be surprised how easy it is. All the hacker needs to do is send a phishing email to an employee. The email may have a downloadable PDF file that immediately downloads a virus in your network.

If you trained your employees to be security conscious, the hacker would never gain a foothold in your business. Scheduling regular training sessions to remind your workers about the importance of maintaining security any time they are handling sensitive business data goes a long way in avoiding security breaches.

  1. Enforce Security Policies

Once you’ve trained your employees on the importance of maintaining security, you want to make sure that your security policies are up to date and in-line with the training you just gave your employees. For instance, you can enforce a security policy that forces people to change their passwords after every two weeks.

  1. Review and Update Physical Security

So as not to leave anything to chance, make sure your physical security profile is up to date. Hackers have been known to go low-tech if they want something badly enough. If they cannot get into your business through the network, they may try to break into your brick and mortar establishment. Make sure all the locks are working perfectly, and you have the latest locks on your doors.

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