Data Security Essentials: How Startup Tech Businesses Can Protect Confidential Information

Protecting confidential information is important for your startup to maintain a competitive edge, comply with regulations, and build long-term trust with your customers and partners. It's becoming an integral part of business's daily habits, especially in a fast-evolving online world like today. 

Startups that protect confidential information are more attractive to investors. The fact that they take data security practices seriously shows how worried they are about online threats. Recent statistics show that 80% of business owners plan to increase their spending on information security this year.

Let's face it: The consequences of neglecting data security practices are devastating, so it's important to consider them. 67% of organizations are highly concerned that their current data protection approaches might not be sufficient to address increasing online data threats. 

This article explains data security practices and how your business can effectively protect confidential information.

Stay aware of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) 

Many startups are pressured to sign standard form NDAs called Confidentiality Agreements. These documents typically favor the party asking you and your business to sign them, even in some cases, to the point where they are only interested in protecting the entity's confidential information. 

It's important that you carefully look at these NDA forms to ensure that your confidential information is properly protected and pay close attention to the restrictions imposed on the other party that is allowed to use the information for evaluation purposes.

Any business transaction involving confidential information should include a separate agreement when both parties agree to work together. After the deal is made, startups should have a lawyer to have their own NDA and protect both parties' confidential information. 

Another practice to remember is never to use NDAs from the internet since they are usually developed with specific criteria that might not fit your case and might cost you lots of time to revise and modify to fit your needs. 

Moreover, when it comes to signing NDAs, it should be done with the parties that receive the companies' confidential information, which includes employees and founders. Signing NDAs is great, but never disregard researching the party where the information will be disclosed. You need to always consider the risks of disclosing information first since enforcing NDAs can be challenging. 

Use a cookie bot privacy policy generator for legal compliance 

Based on international data privacy regulations and current business standards, having a privacy policy is important if you want to gather personal information from your users. This includes cookie data, IP addresses, email addresses, and other sensitive information. 

Each year, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) impose new restrictions on data collection. This means that online businesses collecting sensitive information must comply with the standards set by data privacy regulators. 

With many new tech advancements, it's now becoming easier to create privacy policies than before. You can simply use a cookiebot privacy policy generator that helps in legal compliance for your site. 

Here are a few short tips to follow when using a cookie bot privacy policy generator and how to create a compliant privacy policy for your website: 

• Answer some questions: When using a cookie bot privacy policy generator, you'll follow a short guide that asks you to answer essential questions that fit your privacy policy based on how you collect and process data. 
• Receive your policy: It'll only take a few minutes to receive your privacy policy, customized based on your requirements. The languages available will depend on which privacy policy generator you are using. 
• Publish your new privacy policy: Format the policy that best aligns with your branding and add it to an accessible place on your site, such as the main menu, legal policies tab, or the website footer. 

Many online businesses will use cookie privacy policy generators since they are simple, offer customizable features that allow you to create privacy policies based on your website privacy practices that fit your target market, and increase legal compliance. 

Use an IT Asset Management (ITAM) software 

IT asset management (ITAM) software protects confidential information by viewing the company's software and hardware assets, tracking their use, and ensuring they comply with legal regulations. 

IT asset management solutions are the cornerstone of your modern digital infrastructure. They are the key to optimizing your IT operations and ensuring your business evolves. 

ITAM software supports integration with many other tools and platforms. It automates asset management and provisioning and reduces human errors. ITAM software offers compliance management features that ensure compliance with software licenses and regulatory requirements. 

Moreover, most ITAM software offers two important features for protecting confidential information: compliance reporting and data encryption. Compliance reporting features generate compliance reports, ensuring your startup follows regulatory requirements. Data encryption features protect sensitive asset information both at rest and in transit. 

That being said, the ITAM tool you choose will impact your business's ability to effectively manage your IT assets. Choosing the ideal ITAM software is an important decision you have to make, and this involves many steps you have to undertake, which include: 

• Assessing your IT infrastructure requirements: You must initially assess your IT infrastructure and management needs. Identify the volumes and types of the IT assets you have to manage. 
• Evaluate software capabilities and features: You must find a solution that aligns with your business requirements. In this case, it would be ITAM software that offers features for protecting confidential information. 
• Focus on support and user-friendliness: Vendor support is important for successfully implementing and utilizing your ITAM system. Always choose software that offers a user-friendly interface and is accessible for your team to navigate. 
• Analyze the cost and return on investment: Always pay attention to the initial purchasing costs of the software, its maintenance costs, training, and other factors that influence the final price. Calculate the total costs and check up on the return on investment. 

Regardless of what you do, check the security features and their legal compliance. Ensure your ITAM software complies with industry standards and implements adequate security measures. Secure access control features and data encryption are vital for protecting your IT asset data. 

Leverage the use of battery intelligence software 

Battery Management Systems (BMSs) are important for promoting the safety and efficiency of high-power battery energy storage systems (BESSs) in vehicular and stationary apps. Battery systems have a high volume of data and are challenging enough to handle, increasing complexity. Data volume is generated by battery management systems (BMS). 

Data produced by BMS strongly depends on the module manufacturer and the module integration in a large battery system. Just storing the amount of data can pose difficulties for battery system owners and growing electric fleets. It's always important to consider the data pipeline for battery data whenever an electric vehicle (EV) or new battery asset is purchased. 

The key is to find the right balance and let's not forget that handling high-velocity data influences design decisions. For instance, event-based data processing is great for time-sensitive analytics. Batch processing is better for scheduled computation of large datasets but isn't always suitable for real-time analytics. 

Big Data can bring technical challenges, but value is what helps you tackle them all. Value is created in the industry by analyzing collected data for: 

• Reducing safety risks
• Reducing related costs 
• Extending battery lifetimes
• Monitoring warranties
• Influencing supply chain decisions in the battery industry  

This is where battery analytics features from battery intelligence software help create value from Big Battery data. Each battery intelligence software has its own unique predictive analytics features. 

For instance, Elysia battery intelligence from Fortescue is an excellent software that offers your predictive analytics to anticipate any potential data security risks. However, there's much more that predictive analytics can do for you, mainly for creating value from Big Battery data, for example: 

• Monitors safety to prevent critical failures and reduce operational risk 
• Uses advanced Machine-Learning (ML) aging models to protect against battery degradation
• Offers energy management features that ensure data centers and critical systems have reliable power supplies and reduce risks of downtime that can expose data to security threats 

By implementing battery intelligence software, you create value for Big Battery data and better analyze collected data, reducing data security risks by a large margin. 

Implement role-based access control 

Protecting confidential information is strongly impacted by how well the company's employees can manage it. Statistics show that 95% of data security breaches result from human mistakes! Therefore, training your employees to understand the value of the company's confidential information and the important data protection steps is always important. 

A main principle to follow is to implement role-based access control. This includes granting employees access to certain information based on their role in your company. Internal breaches can occur at any time, usually when sensitive information is given to users with no right to access it. 

All employees should only access certain required information to help them effectively perform their daily duties. Limiting certain networks for lower-level employees who don't need sensitive information to perform their daily responsibilities is always a good idea. 

Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) 

MFA is a multi-step account login process that requires users to enter more than one verification method. For instance, after a password has been entered, users can be asked to enter a code that will be sent to their email or undergo any other form of verification.  

Second forms of authentication are always great for preventing unauthorized access if a password gets breached. MFA adds a layer of security to prevent unauthorized users from accessing certain accounts, even when their password is breached. Online businesses can use MFA to identify IDs and provide access to authorized users. 

MFA works by requesting multiple ID forms from a user during the account registration phase. The login is a multi-step process that verifies other ID information and a password. Here's how the MFA process goes: 

• Registration: The user creates an account with the password and username. After, they link other items, such as physical hardware or a mobile device. The item can be virtual, including an email address, mobile phone number, authenticator app codes, and more.
• Authentication: When a user with MFA-enabled logs onto a site, they are prompted for their password and username, which is the first ID factor, and the second one will depend on what criteria are set. For example, this may be a code to enter on your mobile device, answering a security question, or something else. 
• Reaction: The user is done with the authentication process. This is where they access the system when complete verification is done. 

MFA can be implemented in many different ways. Still, recent tech advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) analyze trends and identify any irregular behaviors in the system access. These solutions monitor user activity over time for identifying patterns, establishing baseline user profiles, and detecting unusual behaviors, including: 

• Login attempts during unusual hours
• Login attempts from unknown devices
• Login attempts from unusual or unknown areas 

Modern-day ML algorithms use a risk score to assess irregular events and adjust multiple authentication factors in real-time based on business policies. For example, if the risk score is low, the user can sign in without a password or username. However, if there's medium-risk behavior, the user might need to enter an SMS code, and high-risk behavior will deny access altogether. 

Encrypt your data 

If you want secure communication and to effectively protect confidential information, it's always important to encrypt your data. According to statistics, 42% of survey respondents claimed they use data encryption to protect users' data. 

Data encryption is great since it ensures that all conversations remain private and won't be accessed by external members. Data encryption offers excellent protection since even if someone does gain access to the data, they still won't be able to decode any of the data without the encryption key. 

This allows communication between users to be secure through a special encryption key used with a cryptographic algorithm to protect sensitive information. If fraudsters gain access to the key, you are still protected since it will no longer have any value. This is why data encryption is needed to protect confidential information. 

Data encryption is done using two methods: at rest and in motion. 

Data at rest is encrypted in the following ways: 

• Whole disk encryption: Data encryption is stored on computing devices and storage media and can be configured to encrypt confidential data. 
• File encryption: Encryption of confidential data should be provided to facilitate secure transportation of individual files over networks without offline storage devices or transmission encryption. 
• Database storage: Encryption of confidential data should be done through whole disk encryption. 

Next, we have data in motion, which is encrypted in the following ways: 

• File transfers: Encrypting your confidential file transfers can be done using a network service or an encrypted transmission protocol. 
• Virtual Private Network (VPN): VPNs offer additional protection for confidential data that is transmitted via the network. This is an excellent option when you see that other options aren't as useful. 
• Remote file services: Confidential data encryption should be done through encrypted transmission protocols like SSL/TLS, IPSec, or whichever you see fit. 
• Email: All confidential content that is transmitted in emails should be encrypted in a secure message format because emails can easily be exposed to unauthorized access at any time. 
• Web-based applications: Encrypting confidential data that is communicated between web-based apps and a user's browser can be done through secure protocols like HTTPS, TLS/SSL, etc. 
• Database access: Encrypting confidential data that is transmitted between app servers and a database should be used to prevent unauthorized interceptions. 

Data encryption is highly important if you are concerned about data security and is widely used by most organizations to ensure that external actors are not "sneaking" between conversations. 

Keep your password policies strict 

Password management is important if you want to make sure that your accounts aren't easily breachable. Many users might fall into the trap of creating easy passwords that online attackers easily breach. This not only risks breaching confidential information but puts your business reputation at risk. 

Did you know that 34% of users claimed that they changed their passwords at least once every month? If you want to incorporate the right password policy laws, you should inform users of how they should create a password and use a password strength meter. 

The password strength meter will show whether the user has created a good password or not and show the password's strength. You can set restrictions like not allowing users to use a certain password if their password strength is weak. This is an excellent approach for effectively protecting confidential information and educating the user on how to avoid data security risks independently. 

Don't forget about data backup and recovery 

Backing up your data is copying information that is stored on your laptop, mobile phone, tablet, or desktop. This includes photos, emails, address books, videos, documents, etc. Backups deposit data in a separate location that can be retrieved whenever necessary. 

A good backup strategy is using the 3-2-1 backup strategy, which shows that your data is properly duplicated and can easily be recovered. Here's how the strategy works: 

• Three data copies include having two duplicate versions and your original data in case one of the duplicate versions fails. 
• Two storage types: Used in case a failed backup or recovery occurs due to a specific storage option. 
• One copy is stored away from your home or business in case there's physical damage due to a natural disaster or an incident. For example, you store your data on a laptop that you left in your basement. If your office were to get destroyed by a natural disaster, you have your other laptop at home.

Moreover, data losses can occur for several reasons. Some of the main reasons are: 

• Human error
• Hard drive failure
• Computer malware 
• Lost or stolen devices

Furthermore, let's not forget about the types of data backup. Data backup options are always evolving, and choosing the option that best meets your storage needs and personal preferences is always important. To protect your data at the maximum level, it's best if you combine these types of data backups: 

• Removable devices: USB flash drives are the most practical and common ways to store data. USBs aren't too practical for offering large amounts of storage space. In this case, you might need to use multiple devices to hold your information, which makes restoring your data much more challenging. Since USBs are small, they can also easily become lost or stolen. 
• External hard drive: This is a highly popular backup option with plenty of storage space. You can transfer your device data from your device to an external hard drive. However, remember that external hard drives might break over time and even be stolen. 
• Cloud backup: Cloud backups are an effective option because the data won't be stored on a device you own, which is great because you have no chance of losing the device. Let's not forget that cloud backup even has options that offer unlimited capacity. However, always make sure that your provider encrypts your data for better data security and that the service is compatible with your device. 
• Device/desktop backups: Always back your data up on all devices. If one device becomes corrupted, you can use the other and make sure that you always have at least one device that keeps your data safe. 

There's no right or wrong answer when choosing the best type of backup, but the answer is to see which type of backup best fits your requirements for protecting your confidential information. 

Now is the right time to protect your confidential information 

Protecting your business's confidential information is important if you want to influence legal compliance with data protection regulations and protect your startup's reputation. This is done by using the right data prevention practices against unauthorized access, accidental losses, damages, lack of data backup, and implementing the right password policies. 

Once you set everything up based on the practices we showed you, it's time to use them to reduce data breach risks and ensure that you and your team members are always prepared for any uncertainty. 

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