Data leakage – One issue that haunts corporate businesses or people with their websites. You may have heard about how a particular company has lost everything because of the leakage of its central data or something like this.
Data leakage is simply horrifying for people who have an online presence. It cannot be avoided altogether because of so many vulnerabilities, but you can try specific ways to prevent it in the best possible way.
What is Data Leakage?
Data leakage can be defined as when the attackers expose specific important data, physically or electronically. Most of the time, data leakage doesn’t occur because of some virus or bugs in your website; it occurs through the devices of your employees or USBs with stored data and even external hard drives.
It often happens unintentionally due to the negligence of either the person in charge or others with access to it.
Let’s take the example of real-time data leakage. Equifax got the worst data breach in 2017. As a result, the personal and financial information of approximately 147.9 million individuals was compromised. The data was compromised of names, social security numbers, birthdates, addresses, and even credit card information.
What can you do to Prevent Data Leakage?
Although data leakage cannot be avoided altogether, you can take specific measures to ensure it doesn’t happen too often.
Do Not Scatter Your Website Data Everywhere
It’s always frustrating to deal with a mess of any sort. It can be the condition of your kitchen after the cooking session or your messed up study table after your whole night of studying.
In the world of IT, this mess involves the presence of your website data on multiple devices or IT assets. When your website data is present in almost every workstation at your office, you will need help to contain it effectively.
If you have a company website, you cannot encrypt every smartphone or USB drive in your office to keep your data from leaking. How can you keep your data safe if almost any employee can access it?
The only way to deal with it is to store your data in a central space strongly guarded by a VPN and cyber security tools. Not scattering your website data everywhere helps create an extra shield that’s difficult for hackers or attackers to break.
Continuous Monitoring
Continuous monitoring is the ultimate strategy to keep a check on something. Regular security audits on websites help track any changes or irregular behavioral patterns.
Hackers usually follow the recognition campaigns in which they roam around your website for about six months to recognise its patterns and find the vulnerable spots from which they can enter your virtual world.
This means you can easily detect the change in your server and identify something fishy with the help of continuous monitoring.
Many data leak prevention tools help you quickly tackle this issue and keep your data from leaking. You can also make use of reliable anti-virus software to guard your website data in a better way.
Data Encryption
Encrypting your essential website data is an effective way of keeping it from getting leaked. Hackers will disregard your website if you use impressive encryption strategies. However, those cyber security attackers who are good at stealing others’ data may not find it hard to decrypt your data.
This method and other data leakage prevention strategies should be used. You shouldn’t solely be dependent on it.
When discussing Data encryption for a website, nothing is better than a VPN.
A VPN encrypts your data by creating a secure and safe tunnel between your device and the VPN server. This scenario can use encryption protocols like OpenVPN, IPSec, or L2TP. These protocols ensure that the transmitted data is protected from all unauthorized parties. Make sure you go for a VPN with a DNS leak protection feature to stay on the safe side of the internet.
Data Loss Prevention Software
If you want to say goodbye to accidental and unauthorized data leakage from your website, use effective data loss prevention software. As the name suggests, this software acts like a knight in shining armor for your data and shields it against attackers after your essential data.
Many AI software for data leak prevention tackles everything if you provide the proper guidelines. From actively monitoring your website for any irregular patterns to detecting the presence of attackers and preventing them from stealing your data, the DLP is an all-in-one solution for you. On a basic level, you can use SSL certificates to ensure encryption.
Endpoints Safety
The devices connected to the data transfer’s last location are called endpoints. It’s hard to keep track of all the endpoints as there are too many connected devices in the market now. This is especially difficult regarding remote working because the number of endpoints, in this case, is much higher.
Suppose an attacker finds its way to the endpoint having weak security; your whole system can be compromised.
To avoid this from happening, it’s essential to educate your employees about data leakage. They should be trained about the importance of security regarding endpoints. Your employees should know how dangerous data leakage can be and what strategies they should use to avoid it.
Conclusion
Like any other problem, data leakage issues come with specific solutions. These solutions can act as preventive measures and help you avoid this data leakage disease in the best possible way. We have described some of the best data leakage prevention strategies for websites. Make sure you use these to protect your website like a pro.
Anas Hassan is a tech geek and cybersecurity enthusiast at PureVPN. He has vast experience in the field of digital transformation industry. When Anas isn’t blogging, he watches the football games.