With cybercrime on the rise, encrypting your data can help keep your data safe and secure from hackers, says Layla Cockburn, operations director at Filestream.
Data breaches and threats to cyber security are becoming more and more frequent right now so encryption has moved to the forefront of business to ensure that sensitive documents are safe and secure from the risk of hackers.
In the last few months, a company we’ve all heard of suffered a data breach – Ticketmaster.
Personal details of an estimated 560 million customers worldwide were stolen in the hack. Cybercriminals attempted to sell that information online. Hackers themselves shared news of the breach. Details stolen included contact details and encrypted credit card details.
The group responsible for the hack called themselves ShinyHunters. An advert was posted on a hacking forum in May offering the data. They stole the login details from Snowflake, the company used by Ticketmaster for its cloud storage account. More than 160 other Snowflake clients had been targeted, including banking group Santander.
Then in June this year, patient data managed by pathology testing organisation Synnovis was stolen in a ransomware attack. Qilin, a Russian cyber crime group shared almost all of the 400GB of data that they’d stolen onto their darknet site.
More than 3,000 hospital and GP appointments were disrupted by the attack. Stolen data included patient names, dates of birth, NHS numbers and descriptions of blood tests. There were also business account spreadsheets that detailed financial arrangements between hospitals, GP services and Synnovis. It isn’t known how much money the hackers demanded from the company or if Synnovis entered negotiations.
More recently Transport for London (TfL) confirmed that they had suffered a breach of customer data following a cyber attack to their systems. They have since confirmed that someone has been arrested in relation to this attack.
These three examples show that encryption is increasingly vital for all businesses and organisations.
Very simply, encryption turns important information, that people can use to hack your or your company’s bank, emails, or messages, into a code that looks like random numbers and letters.
The business owner will have the correct encryption key to turn it back into readable data.
Here are five reasons why encryption can benefit your business:
Encryption can protect you from data breaches
The recent high-profile cyber-attacks have shown us every business is at risk of having their data hacked. The encryption of files and data protects the data stored on a computer and can save your business from a hack that could shut it down forever.
Encryption can also protect your customers from data breaches
When a business puts their trust in you, they’re trusting you have the systems in place to keep their data safe. Over the years, you collect so much data within your business that could identify your customers if it fell into the wrong hands. It could also put them at risk of fraud attempts and more. By having an encryption system in place you can protect your customers and your reputation.
Your customers will trust you more
As business owners, you must demonstrate you can be trusted with personal information and business information. Data breaches do have to be reported so these incidents will become public.
Encryption will protect your mobile devices
We live in a world where remote working has become popular and there are a lot of jobs where business travel is a thing. An encryption system allows you the safety and the peace of mind of knowing that your documents are protected should your laptop, phone or tablet get stolen.
Your business is protected legally and financially
If the steps to protect client data aren’t taken and your system is hacked, you put yourself at risk from fines and potential legal ramifications – as well as any loss caused by the data breach itself.
There is no company which can promise any other company that they are 100 per cent safe from cyber attacks. However, working with a credible document manager partner can greatly reduce that risk.
Layla Cockburn is operations director at Filestream https://filestreamsystems.co.uk