Protecting corporate data is critical in the face of rising cyber-attacks. But however grave the dangers may be, some continue to use traditional file-sharing services and email, which leads to breaches sooner or later. The following statistics make it evident:
- In 2022, organizations worldwide identified a total of 493.33 million ransomware attacks.
- Russia sponsored 37 cyber operations across various industries in 2022, while China sponsored 32.
- The average global cost of a data breach in 2023 was $4.45 million, up 15% from 2020.
- While criminals initiate 48% of financial attacks, 33% are caused by human error.
- The United States has the highest number of malware attacks, totalling 2.68 billion.
Our post covers the most common threats to privacy and ways to protect yourself. Additionally, we delve into virtual data rooms as an unparalleled solution for your security.
What is business data security?
Business data security is the practice of protecting sensitive digital documents from a breach, unauthorized access, or damage throughout their lifecycle. The process covers many aspects, including software, hardware, user devices, user access, organizations’ policies, and international data security standards.
As businesses worldwide move online, modern cloud solutions offer a range of features for enhancing data protection and transparency. These features include end-to-end encryption, data masking, data resiliency, granular user access, backup, and many other robust measures that we will explain further in our post.
What are the most common causes of data security breaches?
You can better protect your privacy by understanding what puts your documents at risk.
1. Insider threats
These are the most common causes of data breaches that take different forms, including human error and malicious intent. To mitigate these risks, limit access to sensitive data and monitor accounts closely. Use insider threat detection and prevention tools to automate the process and react quickly to abnormal user behaviour.
2. Weak passwords
An organization with a firm security policy regarding frequently changed passwords is more resilient against breaches. After all, attackers often gain access to data due to weak passwords.
If your software lacks password protection, you must ensure that your colleagues use only complex passwords, change them periodically, and never store them in easily accessible places.
3. Unpatched vulnerabilities
Since even some of the most secure cloud storage solutions have vulnerabilities, providers release updates to fix them. However, users often ignore them, which increases security risks. Therefore, updating your storage whenever possible is essential.
4. Social engineering
This term covers various harmful activities carried out through psychological manipulation. It includes baiting, scareware, pretexting, phishing, and spear phishing. Social engineering is especially dangerous because it targets human error rather than operating system vulnerabilities, making the problem more difficult to detect and prevent.
The only way to avoid this threat is to educate users on what social engineering is, how attacks of this type occur, and how to deal with them appropriately.
5. Malware
Attackers implement malicious software into the target system to steal passwords or lock down the entire system. As a rule, they do this through vulnerabilities in unpatched applications. Organizations often fall victim to phishing attacks by receiving malicious links or attachments via email and opening them.
Again, the entire team must understand how malware works and be able to recognize attacks.
Is there a surefire way to protect your company from all of the above?
Luckily, virtual data rooms have everything you need to keep things secure. In addition, it is a multifunctional platform for managing documents and users, including a data room index, task assignment, built-in communication features, and analytics tools.
According to Terry Snyder, co-founder of datarooms-review.com, here is how the solution benefits users:
“Virtual data rooms always provide strong security measures and an unwavering commitment to privacy. They offer a foolproof way to protect your data from the countless threats lurking at every turn.”
What is dataroom software for securing sensitive business information?
A data room is a secure online platform for storing and sharing documents. It eliminates all aforementioned cyber risks by providing multiple data protection tools and complying with international data security standards. Due to their robust reliability, data rooms are widely used in mergers and acquisitions, due diligence, initial public offerings, and other confidential deals.
Virtual data room security features
See how the software’s main security features work in our brief overview:
| Data encryption | Data room providers use AES 256-bit encryption, the most robust and reliable encryption. |
| Document permissions settings | A VDR admin can allow users or groups to view, edit, print, share, or copy a document. Users cannot change these permissions. |
| Watermarking | Digital watermarks (embedded markers on the documents) help easily track who downloads and prints information, preventing information breaches. |
| Two-factor authentication | In addition to entering a password, users need to authenticate on a personal device. This way, a third party can’t enter a data room using your password. |
| Audit logs | Audit logs accurately show every activity in the data rooms. In addition, you can create a PDF or Excel version of these reports and use them in meetings. |
| Time and IP access restrictions | Access to storage can be restricted from specific IP addresses and during particular periods, giving you added control over data and users. |
| User security impersonation | This feature eliminates the risk of human error since you can look at the virtual workspaces from any user’s perspective when setting up data access. |
| Remote shred | Unlike other solutions, a secure data room lets you delete a document even after the recipient downloads it. Thus, you can manage data within the storage and outside. |
Also, each secure data room complies with international data security standards, including GDPR, ISO/IEC 27018, FINRA, SOC 1, SOC 2 and SOC 3, HIPAA, etc. This compliance guarantees that your sensitive information is protected by robust protocols and technologies that meet international security standards.
Key takeaways
- Despite numerous data protection technologies, ensuring corporate document security remains critical. Common problems are insider threats, weak passwords, unpatched vulnerabilities, social engineering, and malware.
- One of the most reliable ways to protect corporate data today is virtual data rooms, which provide comprehensive protection, from end-to-end encryption to compliance with the highest data security standards.
- By researching the data room market and selecting the most appropriate solution, you can ensure your data is protected from all cyber threats.
