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5 Tips for Preventing Future Data Breaches—Absolute Trust

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In the first nine months of 2020, there werenearly 3,000 publicly reported data breachesin the United States. While your organization was hopefully not part of this group, it is not unlikely that your team may have had a security scare or false alarm this past year. With more people working from home than ever before and having to access their private information from remote or unsafe locations, security breaches and data leaks are on the rise.

Tips for preventing future data breaches

Although data breaches are becoming more common overall, there are still plenty of proactive steps InfoSec teams can take to prevent future breaches or scares from occurring. As the means of doing business becomes increasingly interconnected and online, the rate of data breaches caused by external vendor error has also increased. One of the first places an InfoSec team should look to help prevent future data breaches is at their vendor risk management strategy.

Here are five tips for preventing future data breaches:

1. Establish your vendor security program foundation and stick to it.

Your internal vendor security posture can impact everything from new customer deals to your reputation in your industry. Developing a strong, process-based program foundation will give your team the right jumping-off point to make strategic decisions to establish new security controls while preventing gaps that could cause breaches.

2. Publish your security posture for current, new, and prospective vendor access.

Some security breaches are caused because of a miscommunication between an InfoSec team and their vendor counterparts. Your team can eliminate any confusion on both sides by publishing your security posture – how you develop and respond to security controls – and then sharing it with trusted vendors.

3. Educate your internal team on the importance of online security and privacy.

Unfortunately, some security breaches are also caused by manual internal error. InfoSec teams should work with HR and executive stakeholders to ensure data security and privacy is a top-down, company-wide issue. When your employees understand the consequences of lapsed security, they will be more diligent in their online activities.

4. Run continuous audits of your InfoSec hardware and infrastructure.

Your company is constantly growing, and your InfoSec strategy should keep a steady pace. Running continuous audits of your security controls, hardware, processes, and other risk infrastructure can ensure there are no gaps where a potential security breach could take place. These audits can also identify areas of necessary improvement or even lapsed compliance controls for vendors.

5. Implement a proactive vendor risk management strategy.

The most important thing to remember when working to prevent data breaches is to not sit around and wait for them to occur before taking action. Your team should constantly be assessing, checking, and reviewing your current risk management processes to stay up to date. Being proactive is key to preventing any kind of security breach, now or in the future.

Prevent future data breaches with Whistic

The Whistic vendor risk management platform gives InfoSec teams the solutions and flexibility they need to upgrade their vendor security program for whatever lies ahead.

From streamlining the vendor assessment process to giving salespeople access to the information they need to close deals,Whistictakes data security and privacy from a roadblock to a differentiator.

Information Security