When planning to launch a startup or are already taking the first steps towards expanding your new business, one of your most urgent priorities should be establishing a comprehensive data security solution.
Establishing the best data security practices and full cloud data security will give you a clear competitive edge over your competitors, save you a lot of time and stress – and may even save your startup from bankruptcy.
Startups are exciting, high-energy projects. It’s easy to become overly focused on conforming to your business plan and achieving initial short-term business goals, derailing the building of rock-solid infrastructure foundations.
If you’re operating with a limited budget and time window, need to keep investors happy, or establish a brand or product ahead of your competitors, there’s always a temptation to cut corners. One pitfall is to attach a lower priority to implementing effective data security and the best practices for your industry.
Many startups operate initially with small teams and may lack specialist knowledge regarding cybersecurity and data security. If you’re hiring IT consultants or cybersecurity freelancers, you may not get the best advice or the optimal DLP solutions.
If you’re not an IT professional, it’s extremely difficult to evaluate third-party recommendations and identify the best data security practices instead of what’s merely convenient and profitable for the seller.
Why Startups Need Comprehensive Data Security
There are three main reasons startups need to implement data security best practices. The first is that startups are subject to privacy regulations like all businesses. What were formerly data security best practices guidelines are now non-negotiable requirements.
1. Penalties
Regulators—and the courts—impose tough financial penalties for data breaches. The cumulative effect of fines, class action lawsuits, and loss of business due to reputation damage affects over 60% of established businesses that suffer data breaches. The effect on the average startup is likely to be catastrophic.
2. Intellectual Property
The second reason many startups require unbeatable data security and the best security practices is to protect their own confidential data. You must protect your data if you have a revolutionary new product or groundbreaking technology or have discovered an unexploited market niche.
Industrial espionage is a reality, and there are plenty of competitors (particularly in other countries) who will pay hackers to steal your ideas and products. If you want to survive and prosper, you must implement data security best practices across the board and full cloud data security before launching your business.
3. Regulation
The third reason startups need to master customer data security best practices from Day One is that they are already mandated requirements for companies that want to work in regulated industries like the Department of Defense supply chain, the financial sector, and the healthcare sector.
As awareness grows, other industries will likely adopt the stringent cybersecurity standards of these sectors. If your startup complies with all current customer data security best practices, you will be better placed to bid for future contracts.
5 Best Data Security Practices for Startups
1. Establish a Corporate Cybersecurity Culture
When launching a startup, putting together your team, and hiring your first employees, you can implement a cybersecurity culture from the ground up. Many major companies struggle to create effective cybersecurity education and awareness programs for their employees.
A genuine corporate culture of proactive cybersecurity is entirely beyond their reach. You can get things right from Day One by educating your staff and building the concept of data security best practices into your company’s DNA.
2. Implement Effective Physical Controls
When you create a corporate cybersecurity culture, ensure that it includes effective physical controls over workspaces and devices. Data security best practices include many basics that are often overlooked. Lock workstations down so they can’t be removed, and use lockable device cases for hard drives.
A regularly updated BIOS password will reduce the threat of data theft using removable media. Consult with security experts to devise physical safeguards and deterrents against industrial espionage and data theft. Threats include smartphones with high-resolution cameras and the theft of discarded or trashed documents and hard drives.
3. Understand the Threats and Stay Updated
Many CEOs and board members (and investors) only have a hazy concept of the cyber threats that their startups potentially face. The cyber threat landscape is continually evolving, and malicious actors quickly exploit new technologies to identify weaknesses.
You need to understand the full spectrum of threats, including hacking, phishing, colleague impersonation, loss and theft of devices containing hard drives, rogue employees who steal and sell data, and malicious actors’ direct suborning of vulnerable employees.
4. Never Rely Entirely on Your DLP Project
A DLP (data loss prevention) project or solution is usually a patchwork of software and cybersecurity tools designed to prevent data loss or rapidly alert IT managers to data breaches after the event.
A typical DLP project includes a standard firewall that can verify or disallow traffic, NAC (network access control) that can exclude non-compliant endpoint devices from your network, and proxy servers to evaluate and filter traffic. The concept of a modular DLP solution is already obsolete and is simply an interesting challenge for hackers to overcome.
5. Always Use Data Encryption
When you devise a cyber security solution for your startup, don’t work on the assumption that data breaches may occur. Work on the basis that sensitive data breaches will occur. Automatic encryption is increasingly seen as being at the top of the list of best practices for data security.
The encryption needs to be multi-channel and also include shadow cloud data security. If/when you experience a data breach (or simple data loss through human error), the compromised data will be unreadable to unauthorized parties.
When Data Security Best Practices Become a Problem
Guidelines for best data security practices don’t always account for the exigencies of launching a startup. You need flexibility when creating a business from scratch—often on a budget.
Best practices for customer data security can rapidly become a hindrance if permissions and procedures negatively impact your workflows in a development or rapid growth phase. You need a preemptive cyber security solution that safeguards sensitive client and confidential data but allows your staff to do their jobs with minimal disruption.
Data security best practices guidelines may not match your immediate needs, IT capabilities, or budget. Multi-factor authentication may be beyond your reach, and you may not be ready for penetration tests and vulnerability assessments.
Achieving comprehensive data security and best practices can be daunting for startup owners who want to break into the market and sell their products or deliver new services.
There’s a tendency to overcomplicate cybersecurity and DLP solutions when simplicity is the way ahead.
