In 2021 data breaches cost companies an average of $4.24 million per incident.
Data held by organizations is incredibly important, and lost data can be a major problem. It’s important to keep your data as secure as possible to prevent any problems for your business.
For 9 tips on preventing data loss, keep reading.
1. Back-Up Everything
One of the most stable forms of lost data prevention is to back everything up onto another storage device. You can put any important data on an external hard drive, so if it’s ever lost from your main device you have a copy of everything ready to go.
2. Cloud Storage
Another way of backing up your data is with cloud storage. One of the main advantages of this is that you can access the data from anywhere with an internet connection.
You can also easily give other people access, which is ideal for businesses.
3. Save Often
This is a lesson that most people learn the hard way. When you’re working on anything important you should save it regularly.
If your computer crashes for any reason, you’ll only be able to go back to the last save you have of something, so if you haven’t saved in several hours then that time could end up being completely wasted.
4. Data Assessment
Sometimes you may work with a huge amount of files. By conducting a data assessment you can prioritize files to determine what’s important and what isn’t.
This way you can define what data you’ll need in a disaster situation, and even specify who will need access to it. This helps you secure and back up data more efficiently.
5. Encrypt Your Data
Regardless of how much data security you have in place, there’s always at least a small risk that someone will gain access to it. You should keep all sensitive data encrypted, whether it’s stored on the cloud, on your system, or in transit.
Keeping everything encrypted will reduce the risk of data loss or a security breach.
6. Data Recovery Plan
If you don’t have a data recovery plan, you should develop one. Once you have it, test it to make sure that it works as you want it to. Without any lost data solutions in place, you’re taking a big risk.
Note that data recovery software rarely works, and even when it does it’s rarely 100% effective.
7. Protect Your Devices
With the increased use of mobile devices like laptops and tablets for work, it’s important to keep these devices safe. If anyone manages to steal one of these they could gain access to any data stored on it.
8. Audit Your Data and Systems
This ties into your data recovery plan testing. Audit your system to make sure everything meets your requirements. This is something you should do regularly to keep on top of things.
9. Data Recovery Service
If you do ever lose important data then your best chance of getting it back is through a professional data recovery service. This is your best chance of saving lost data in the event of something like a crashed hard drive, accidental deletion, or accidental formatting.
Avoiding Lost Data
To prevent the risk of lost data you want to make sure everything is encrypted and backed up. Ensure you have a data recovery plan in place, and if you do lose any data get in contact with a data recovery service as soon as you can.
For more tech articles check out some of our other blog posts.
