Editor’s Question: What steps should you take to prevent your digital identity being stolen?
Submission by Mayleen Bywater, Senior Product Manager at Vox.
Our cyber footprint is increasing daily as technology improves and evolves. This statement seems to strike fear in to our minds. So, how do we protect our identity and the data that is created?
Digital identity theft is on the increase and for this reason we stress the importance of and implore with our clients, both as individuals and as a business, to take the correct measures in order to ensure that sensitive information is secured.
What is our digital identity? Digital identity encompasses characteristics, or data attributes, such as username and password; online search activities, for example electronic transactions; date of birth; ID number; medical history and shopping history or behaviour. A person’s digital identity is linked to one or more digital identifiers, such as an email address, URL or domain name.
It’s the business’s responsibility to make sure that it adopts the correct measures and keeps the following top of mind:
- Ensure that your network has the correct perimeter security
- Consider whether the emails you are receiving and sending are properly protected, this will safeguard that your organisation is not sending out harmful viruses that may be hiding on your network.
- Are you aware of the endpoints utilising your network and who has access to your data?
- Do you have policies in place to ensure that you are protecting the details of your clients?
- Make sure that you share policies and best practices with your staff, insist that security forms part of their training and continuously enforce policies
- Run regular checks on your systems to identify vulnerabilities
- Back your data up to ensure ease of restoration and business continuity.
All these points lead to a solid security posture but will require constant evaluation and checkpoints. Remember that policies are only effective when they are communicated, enforced and kept updated.
There are so many different aspects to digital data and information storage to consider. We recommend using a managed service partner to assist businesses to manage their environments. This will take the security headache away and allow them to spend more time on innovation and focus on growing their business.
The threat landscape is continuously evolving; therefore, it is important for a business to have a firm understanding of its data and its people. Simulate, educate and create a culture of awareness in terms of cyber threats. After all, the reputation of a business is its most valuable asset.
