Recently, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid $17,000 to a hacker who took over their computer systems. Increasingly, hackers’ attempts are bold and numerous in number. Unfortunately, data breaches are becoming a way of life. The best way to protect your business is to take measures to prevent, avoid and mitigate the possibility of a cyber-attack.

Educate Your Staff on a Routine Basis to Reduce Attacks

One of the cornerstones of protecting your business from data breaches is educating your staff. There are many times companies expose their employees to security training during the initial hiring phase and never again. With hacks increasing in number and severity, businesses should make security training more routine. By training employees twice each year, they can quickly recognize and thwart attempts to compromise your systems.

Invest in Updated Systems to Prevent Data Breaches

Another pervasive security problem facing businesses is dated systems. Legacy systems are full of known exploits hackers can easily compromise with their up-to-date technologies. Beyond technical limitations, legacy systems may not work with business’ up-to-date security systems, increasing their vulnerabilities. Although updating information systems can be a significant investment, on the other hand, paying millions to customers who are victims is more expensive.

Always Use Updated Security Measures

With every day that passes, technology improves. For businesses, the best defense against hackers is a robust security system that operates in real-time. Companies’ security infrastructures should be multi-pronged, detecting and preventing attempts to compromise their systems. Many businesses are outsourcing their information systems’ security to capitalize on expert knowledge in the area. With a dedicated team scanning their systems throughout the day, managers know they can focus on their business operations and not worry too much about security breaches.

Purchase Business Insurance

When you think about business insurance, you may think of property insurance or commercial auto insurance, but there are many types of business insurance. In particular, business insurance for data breaches helps companies transfer risk to their insurance company. Based on the terms of the policy, your commercial insurance provider may help you recover financially following an attack.

More and more, data breaches seem like an inevitability. Protecting your business from potential attacks helps you strengthen your business overall. If an attack happens, then your data breach business insurance may help you rebound from an attack quicker than recovering on your own.