Business works with data, every day

Data represents the neural connections of a business – it is how a business thinks.

Data security is where it starts

Protecting data is the first task of IT security. Modern day challenges include protecting business systems (such as financial transactions), communications (especially commercial-in-confidence emails) and interfaces such as websites and social media. But the core requirement remains: protecting data.

Companies often under-estimate how critical their data is. Consider just one example, theft of customer data. Even if the story doesn’t break, in most cases, you are now legally compelled to report it and tell your customers. Your customers perceive that you don’t value their privacy, that you have exposed them to potential fraud or theft, and that you are risky to do business with. So they stop doing business with you.

When trust is lost, any business can be destroyed in weeks.

A growing business, when it conducts its first security audit, is often surprised to find its data scattered across 10 to 20 storage spaces. Some of it lives in clouds, perhaps including an accounting-provider cloud or DropBox, email servers, website hosts and a range of online services and products. This data is now potentially accessible in ways never intended or considered. Put bluntly, the level of security at each storage space is unknown.

More worrying than the data being dispersed, is your data is also in motion.

Every time you process a customer transaction, compile a report, send an email – that data moves and gets shared. That is the point where it is most vulnerable.

So what can you do to address this most basic security need of protecting your data?

You need to understand your risks (Security Audit), to determine the value of your various data (Exposure Risk Management), choose an appropriate toolset (All the Tools), and implement Managed IT Security.

All this is not simple, and it certainly isn’t set-and-forget. It needs expertise. Silverfern can provide that for you, at a level of sophistication that you might not have expected by using leading-edge technology, at a price that is cost effective for your business size and risk profile.

And of course, acting pre-emptively expands your choices and reduces your costs, compared with calling us when the crisis has already hit.