Anthony R. Howard's Blog

7 Inexpensive Ways to Protect Your Business Information & Profits

By Anthony R. Howard

Everybody wants your private data. Hackers, competitors, and cyber criminals not only want access to your data, but just as bad – they want access to your customers data. They want the data that is the lifeblood to your business. To hackers, you are in perfect formation to unknowingly share data that can be analyzed, collected, and sold, or even used against you. To competitors, you are one poorly configured firewall from handing over the recipe to your success and your rolodex of your most important clients contact information. And to the unscrupulous cyber criminals sitting at the table next to you in the coffee shop or the airport, you are one unencrypted wireless connection away from wishing you had paid better attention to this article. Every business is under constant assault by intruders that want access to customer databases, employee records, intellectual property, and ultimately, your profits. Research and statistics will shock you, but still, it's like data disaster recovery, no one pays attention to it until it's too late. It's not important….until your data is gone or your system has already crashed. The vast majority of businesses have already experienced at least one breach and have no idea of how to stop another occurrence. Combine this with the average cost to repair data loss, which is at times in the millions when factoring in lost productivity, and you have a serious reason to change the way you protect information inside of your organization, and even inside of your home. But as you already stretch every resource to the limit just to stay in the game, you need to do more with less. Like you haven't heard that before. Here are some powerful but yet inexpensive ways to avoid the most common ways of data theft. Protect your profits with these 7 Survival Strategies to inexpensively decrease your exposure to costly data theft:

Embrace the human element. I'm not going to tell you to hire good people who won't steal data or to do background checks on people before you hire them because if you're smart enough to be reading this article then you already know that.  I will tell you one of the most tragic mistakes companies make regarding data security is to only approach data privacy from the perspective of the company as a whole, which is a very general perspective. The employees of your company don't understand how data theft and data privacy is relevant to them. Good people can easily leak data by simply being careless or leaving it unprotected.  Simply put, I could get to your data in less than 15 minutes without trying that hard. This is not because I'm a skilled technology specialist.  In many cases, I wouldn't have to use technology. I'd use the human element, simply meaning that folders are left on desks with data that could compromise your company. Passwords to financial records are kept under keyboards. The contact info for your client that represents one-third of your annual revenue is kept on a post-it note for me to see. All privacy starts with the employees.  Bottom line: it doesn't matter what firewall or intrusion detection you use if your employees don't understand the significance of data privacy and protection. No one in your organization will care about data security, privacy policies, intellectual property protection, or data breach until you tell them why it's important, how it can impact them, and then tell them what to do to prevent it. Solution: Give your employees the training (it's as simple as a free annual webinar sometimes) to protect themselves and their company personally from data theft. In addition to showing them that you care, you are developing a privacy culture that can be applied to business and their personal life, and at the same time protecting your profits.

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7 Inexpensive Ways to Protect Your Business Information & Profits

Lets hear from the readers on where they believe the book is/was headed after chapter 1 and general thoughts overall. This will be the main blog post.

Lets hear from the readers on where they believe the book is/was headed after chapter 1 and general thoughts overall. This will be the main blog post.

What do the rest of the readers who are in the intelligence/military life like to read during their downtime and why? Do we all stick to what we know?  Is there a difference and what active and retired military personnel like to read, and why?

Lets’ talk about the real deal.  Let’s speak on military technology, and it’s appearance and impact in books and movies. Is it fact or fiction? And whats the real the impact of conspiracy theories on the literary market. and yes, I’m going to say it….are the “Hollywood military experts” really worth their salt? Lets hear from the experts…

Lets' talk about the real deal.  Let's speak on military technology, and it's appearance and impact in books and movies. Is it fact or fiction? And whats the real the impact of conspiracy theories on the literary market. and yes, I'm going to say it….are the "Hollywood military experts" really worth their salt? Lets hear from the experts…

There is a current discussion on self published versus the  traditionally published path. All creative thoughts are welcome….

Who is your favorite character and why, what about your least favorite.

Did chapter one and the opening/beginning of the book turn you on, or turn you off?

What primary and secondary themes do you pick up?

When did the book really start to pick up for you and become something you did not want to put down?

How did you feel about the technology used in the book, was it interesting?

Was any part of the book predictable? Where do you see the sequel going, and what would you like to see in the sequel

Even if you have only read the first chapter – get your blog on!!