Is Company Data a Liability or an Asset?

Is Company Data a Liability or an Asset

In the age of technology, companies rely on technology however there are many threats and liabilities. Data is the lifeblood for many organizations but with all the data breaches, is your company data a liability or an asset?

When managing your data, organizations are faced with three main challenges including big data, regulatory compliance and effective use of data.  As organizations continue to invest into IT outsourcing, organizations can no longer internally control data.  Some organizations are turning to managed IT services providers (MSP) to outsource their IT services for many reasons such as lowering costs, access to various skill sets, ongoing training and innovation.

When partnering with a managed IT services (MSP) firm, data management and data security are a fundamental part of the services. As data grows, organizations are finding it harder to handle data management because of the pressure from regulators and competition within the sector.  Example, regulators in the financial services industry are auditing everywhere to evaluate processes, security and management of IT infrastructure.

There are countless stories out there about organizations that have lost control of their data and/or it has been leaked to the world.  This causes a PR nightmare plus loss of business, profitability and damage to your reputation.  In this sense, your data is a liability as it can provides cyber criminals with a motive to steal it.

In the age of the cloud services and offsite backups, many organizations have data sitting with partners or data centers. Data is a treasure chest and can be leveraged to provide significant insight into a business.  Organizations need to be strict to keep their organization from being the next front page security breach story.  Data is should be considered a major asset to any organization however if not protected properly, it can quickly turn into a liability.

 

So how do you protect your company data to stay as an asset and not a liability?

Protect your information – all companies need to protect themselves from both sides, internal threats and external threats. A huge number of security breaches are inside jobs and are not the work of cyber criminals. All companies need a strong network protection plan from outside threats but organizations should never overlook internal threats. You need to always provide employees with the most minimal level of security access so they can complete their job duties.

Test your backups – This is one of the biggest issues within organizations.  Most companies have a local backup but does it work? Failure of a backup can put an organization out of business. Data is an asset and organization’s need to treat it as such.  Companies need to get their tech support services to test backups and recover from a failure.  Also, all companies should have offsite backups for disaster recovery.

Compliance – Depending on your industry, you may be part of an industry that is regulated. Data security standards are governed by regulators that are either government agencies or corporations such as credit card companies, insurance carriers, healthcare and many others. It is your responsibility to ensure your company is following industry rules. If you fail to follow, your data can quickly become a liability in the form of large fines, law suits or loss of contracts.

 

Are you confident that your company data is an asset and not a liability?

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365 iT SOLUTIONS partners with its clients to ensure uptime and profitability. We are Toronto’s leading IT consulting firm and offer cutting edge Managed IT ServicesIT Support ServicesIT Outsourcing ServicesTech Support Services and Cloud Services.

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