What is your favorite tool/solution for quickly improving your company’s data security?
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. Adding Two-Factor Authentication
The biggest bang for your buck for organizations comes from enforcing two-factor authentication (usually offered at no cost by application providers) across all critical systems and applications. By doing so, organizations can protect themselves from one of the most common attack vectors: stolen credentials.
2. Using Cavirin for Cloud Computing
For cloud computing, Cavirin is a tool that protects both your cloud workload and associated accounts. It conducts an IT audit and searches for outdated and unpatched servers — the No. 1 culprit implicated in major IT security breaches. Cavirin also checks yourfirewall, OS configurations and monitors your accounts to improve your company’s overall data security.
– Brett Farmiloe, Marketing Auditors
3. Implementing Security Policies
Two-factor methods should always be considered when performing authentication. But we need people to do the basics as well, such as coming up with complex passwords that they can easily remember. Don’t have the mentality of “it can never happen to me.” The sooner you implement security policies, the better your employees will adapt to them. Also, don’t ever send password information via email.
– John Rampton, Due
4. Getting Rid of Shared Passwords
The best solution is to get rid of the shared passwords and Post-It notes around the office. Users having their own passwords protects them and their identity/security, and also protects the company.
5. Eliminating Shared Accounts
Too often, vital accounts are logged into by a number of people sharing the same login credentials. This could be your social media accounts, but could also extend all the way to your online banking accounts. It’s time to draw a line and proactively eliminate shared accounts. Most enterprise systems are set up for multi-user access, where each person has a unique username and password.
– David Ciccarelli, Voices.com
6. Using the 1Password Extension
1Password is an extension that is easy to use and available through multiple platforms. In our opinion, it is much safer than relying on the Cloud because it keeps your vault of passwords local, and you can share on your own terms (through Wi-Fi syncing and more). 1Password also alerts you when websites you use have been breached, so that you can immediately protect data.
– Miles Jennings, Recruiter.com
7. Dashlane and Two-Step Authentication
A good alternative to LastPass is Dashlane, which has a range of unique features. For those who are willing to pay a bit more for the clean, consistent and user-friendly interface, Dashlane is truly the best entry-level password manager. Always set up a two-step authentication process for additional data protection, and track all digital changes in order to hold employees accountable.
8. Keeping Disks Clean
After backing up necessities, it’s important that companies use tools like Data Wiping Software to be sure that whatever they have deleted is absolutely gone. It’s a very “low-tech” way of doing things, but reformatting disks also does the trick and further ensures data security. I would recommend that every company trains their staff in doing the aforementioned as frequently as possible.
Unfortunately, your system is only as secure as your employees allow it to be, so train them well on how to keep the company’s data secure. Knowledge sharing gives team members the tools they need to keep the company safe from outside attacks.
– Robert De Los Santos, Sky High Party Rentals
10. Adding Meldium
Meldium has two-factor authentication password management that allows team members to share login credentials securely without writing down or sending passwords.