While easy to overlook, data is an integral business element. Because this type of information is vital to the health of your company, it’s important to prepare it for the holidays. Not only is the holiday season more demanding in general, but it is also a time when the IT departments of most companies tend to be short-staffed. Fortunately, there are a number of ways that you can deal with fewer IT professionals and continue to keep your data safe. Here are three ways to do so.
Give your Cybersecurity an Energy Drink
Cyber criminals pay attention to the increase in credit card use during the holiday season. For many of them, the temptation of gaining access to the juicy personal information of your customers is irresistible, and they’ll search for ways to get into your systems. If they succeed, they’re likely to cause problems for you and your customers. Fend them off by confirming that your antivirus software is current. Also, increase the strength of your passwords and remind your workers about your company’s security protocols.
Use encryption technology. This type of security is becoming easier to implement and work with. In addition, make sure that it is in place for data that’s in transit. Use Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, technology instead of an insecure connection. In addition, consider looking into the encryption options that are available for your company’s data, business use and devices.
Develop a Backup Plan
Web traffic is higher during the holiday season than it is at any other time of the year. This means that your database will need to manage and store more information now than it will during any other month. Data loss happens, and when it does, it can cost you thousands in recovery fees. Avoid the fund loss by developing a backup plan that prevents your system from failing and wiping out new transactions as well as customer data. Your backup plan should be able to restore your company’s information with little downtime. For instance, Hivelocity’s Rapid Restore service not only provides you with a full system backup every 24 hours but the ability to restore any or all system data 20X faster than a typical data restore.
Detail how your IT team should protect your data and what to do when things don’t go as planned. Establish a step-by-step incident response strategy. This will ensure that you and your team are prepared.
Keep Data Safe 24/7
Instead of keeping everything onsite and internal, consider the benefits of Colocation through Hivelocity. With Hivelocity, Colo customers enjoy monitored services like TCP, DNS, ping, etc… and are notified when alerts are trigged through myVelocity. Professionals will be working 24/7 to protect your company’s data with automated backups, high-availability storage, and data replication. Additionally, dedicated servers and virtual servers are also available and deploy within minutes.
By taking added steps to prepare your data for IT downtime during the holidays, sensitive company information and personal data belonging to your customers are more likely to remain secure. Hivelocity offers support 24 hours a day and seven days a week during the holiday season to make sure that your information is safe. When you store your data with Hivelocity, you’ll know that it’s in good hands.