Data protection is important for both big business firms and small businesses or startups because it is important to safeguard valuable information from corruption, compromise, or loss. For huge enterprises, data protection increases because the amount of data created and stored is bigger, but small businesses are targeted more because they do not take data protection as seriously.
Why Is data protection important?
With the advancements in technology, most businesses have turned towards cloud storage to store data and online transactions for financial transactions. If anyone with ill intentions gets their hands on these data, they can cause a great amount of damage to the organisation.
Data protection for small businesses is essential because breach of that type of data can cause a huge loss to the business which a small business or a startup may not be able to bear.
Risks of not having data protection
Small businesses may think that they are not vulnerable to data breaches. Well, they are wrong because 43% of data breaches occur to small or medium businesses. Although large businesses may face more data breaches them small businesses, the amount is still significant.
What type of data requires stronger protection?
Personal information of a business is usually always protected, but when it comes to the personal information of clients or customers, businesses usually overlook it. A customer’s stolen information is used to create fake profiles and commit frauds. Vital information like names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, health information, or bank details, are all data that should be carefully stored and always protected because if any of these information gets out, it can compromise a customer’s safety in the form of personal integrity, physical safety, and financial security. General Data Protection Regulation, commonly known as GDPR, is a primary law that regulates how companies protect the personal data of EU citizens.
Key Elements of Data Protection
- Confidentiality: Retrieved data are only authorised operators with appropriate credentials
- Integrity: All stored data are reliable, precise, and not subject to any unjustified changes
- Availability: All stored data is safely and readily available whenever it is needed
Losing credibility
The most significant risk of not having data security is losing creditability among your customers. Even if a customer’s data is not affected, they are still less likely to trust your business.
Legal actions
If a company does not maintain data security, legal actions may be taken against them according to the rules and regulations of the general data protection. Legal action may obviously also be taken by the client if their data is compromised in any way.
Operational downtime
When a data breach occurs, operational downtime also occurs, that too for a long time. The ones responsible will have to first have to contain the data breach and then investigate how the data was breached. The company is not operational when all of this is going on and this can result in huge losses.
If you are a small business owner, you need a well-instructed data protection so that the data is secured and not breached. Data protection is applied to avoid many types of fraud which includes phishing attacks, identity theft, and any other type of cyber-attack that may harm a business’s reputation or profitability.