Sensitive data must be kept out of reach from all outsiders. It can be personal information such as financial data, health issues, political information, various passwords, or business information such as business strategies, business agreements, plans for profit, and so on.
So, it should be no surprise that you must protect and safeguard your sensitive information, whether it is about yourself or your business because the exploitation of this information can cause severe damage to your business or can harm your identity.
In this article, we will show you some basic and simple steps by which you can protect your personal information.
Tips to Protect Sensitive Data
Protecting and ensuring the safety of your sensitive data is not tricky contrary to popular belief. Thanks to the advancement of technology, cyber security has improved a lot, and it is very easy to protect your vital information.
Here is a list of things you can follow to protect your confidential data:
1. Keep a Backup of Your Data
It is not uncommon that sensitive data often gets lost. When your device is under cyber-attack, getting hacked, or when there is a virus, oftentimes, you will lose your personal data forever.
To prevent this, keeping a backup of your data in multiple places will ensure that you do not lose any data permanently.
If you lose your data from one source, you can always bring it back from the other. You can store them on small USB devices or separate storage drives like an SSD.
You can also keep hard copies of your data in printed form. However, printed copies are prone to get damaged or stolen more often. Always keep data destruction equipment at your disposal to get rid of any data you don’t need anymore.
2. Protect Your Devices
The amount of personal information getting leaked through a hacker is not as much as someone losing their devices and others who find the device gain access to your personal information. The number of electronic devices that people lose all around the world is astounding.
So if you want to protect your personal information, the first thing you need to do is to protect your personal devices. You can also put different passwords on your device so others cannot easily access your personal information.
There are also multiple ways to shut down your lost device remotely so that your sensitive data does not get leaked.
3. Manage and Organize Confidential Data
Knowing which information is vital and confidential and which is not can help you protect your data very easily, rather than compiling all data in one space. Organize the folders and storage in such a way that lets you easily find them.
If you have easy access to your personal information, you will also be able to secure their access. Since they will be in separate storage, there will be no risk of them getting mixed up with junk files and you accidentally deleting or sharing it with other people.
Separating your sensitive data in a separate folder will also mean it will be well hidden away.
4. Encrypt Folders
After you store your sensitive data in separate storage, it only means it is hidden away from plain sight.
People who go through your device thoroughly will still be able to find it if given enough time. Just storing them separately will not ensure top security.
This is why you must encrypt all folders containing such sensitive data. You can use various software to encrypt your folders such as Cryptomator or Veracrypt. You can use any well-reviewed encryption service to encrypt your sensitive data
5. End-to-End Encryption
End to End encryption is necessary for conversation. Although this is also a form of encryption, the process is pretty different. The previous encryption we talked about was to encrypt folders and sensitive data so that others could not access them.
Hackers can easily hack into your conversation and eavesdrop to get all your personal information when you share your sensitive information with someone over the internet.
However, this will not be possible if the medium you are using for your conversation has end to end encryption. This way, you will be able to share information with only the person you want, and no one else. Also, when sharing files, use apps or portals that support end to end encryption. Messaging apps like Whatsapp should not be your preferred mode of transferring data.
6. Always Use VPN
A VPN will ensure that your public location and IP address are safe. This way, hackers and cyber-blackmailers cannot get a hold of your position and threaten you to leak your personal information to them.
This problem usually does not occur when you are using your home network, such as your broadband line provided by your ISP. The ISP offers all sorts of security to keep your personal information hidden.
But when you are using public networks such as the public wi-fi of your local café, then you need to use VPN as these public wi-fis do not have any sort of security.
7. Always Have Two Factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication means that to log in to your various social media platforms or other areas with your personal information, you need to log in from two separate locations. This is very useful and can be a last resort to keep your information safe.
This way, even when one of your devices gets stolen, people will not be able to log in as they need to gain access from another source. You will be notified on your second device that someone else is trying to log in to your personal information.
You can either remotely change your password or delete the ID to keep the information safe.
Final Thoughts
Keeping your sensitive data without any protection is one of the major reasons behind identity theft and the downfall of various businesses and industries. The importance of keeping these sensitive data safe cannot be explained in plain words.
We hope this article has given you some basic, easy-to-follow steps to keep your or your business’s sensitive data safe and secure.
