It is a truly digital world. We are more connected than ever before. We store data in digital form, whether it be on a local device or a cloud server. While this offers amazing convenience for storing, sharing, and editing files, it also presents significant risks. Just like someone breaking into an office filing cabinet can happen, so too can someone break into where you store your digital files. In this article, we’ll learn how to protect your company & business data this year with a strategy program.
Too often hackers and criminals are able to access data and use it for illegal means. Either they take personal and financial information for identity theft, or they hold the data ransom and get organizations to pay out big money to get access again. Because of these threats, your company needs to do whatever it can to protect your data. If your company has purchasing data, health records, or even staffing records stored digitally, then it is at risk.
If your company becomes the victim of a data breach, then you could suffer serious consequences. For one, your customers, patients, and staff could bring a lawsuit against you if they have suffered damages because of the breach. Customers and the public could lose trust in your brand, which will lead to harm to your revenue. Plus, if the breach is because you weren’t compliant with certain laws or regulations, you could have to pay fines and penalties. In short, if your data is breached, it could cause significant damage to your reputation and finances, and threaten the existence of your company. Here are some ways to protect your company data in 2026.
Culture: Protect Business Data Program
If you don’t have one already, then you need to create a culture of security around your company. If your employees and partners are not invested in maintaining secure storage for your data, then you will have leaks and cracks in your apparatus. It starts with training. Cyber security training provides information about where threats come from, why data breaches are dangerous for the company, and how they can help to keep data secure.
If your employees aren’t computer savvy, then they might think that cyber attacks are rare, and not something they need to worry about. They may also think that your IT department or virus protection will do all the work for them. The fact is, data security involves many important parts, and everyone needs to work together to make it work.
Password Security To Protect Your Company Data
Too many people take their password security for granted. They choose a simple password, such as a favorite pet, or the street they grew up on. They use it for every portal they use, with some minor variations depending on the portal, such as special characters and numbers. If a hacker gets a hold of some personal information, they can then use it to guess their passwords and access data.
Having more complex passwords is a very important aspect to data security. However, many of your employees may not want to have more complicated ones because they are harder to remember, especially if they have to be updated regularly. However, with an enterprise password storage service, you can remove those barriers. The type of software will suggest complex passwords and keep them stored in an encrypted vault for retrieval when needed. It makes it simple for everyone to have stronger passwords and take part in securing your data.
Backup Your Data
Another risk that digital data poses is that it can delete or made unusable. You never know when a human error or a computer issue will delete files or corrupt them. Or, you could be the victim of a ransomware attack and lose access to your data. This is why having backups is so important. Set a regular schedule for everyone to have all of their sensitive information uploaded to a cloud server. Or to a physical hard drive. If it’s on a hard drive, make sure that stores off-site in case of fire or theft. That way, even if you do lose some data, you will be able to back everything up with recent versions so there is little productivity lost.
Software Updates To Protect Your Company Data
Have you ever gotten a software update notification and ignored it, or kept swiping it away from your screen? You might think that your device or operating system is working exactly how you want it to. An update will mess with that. Or, the alerts seem to pop up when you are in the middle of a task. So, you don’t want to stop to go through the updating process.
This is a very dangerous mindset. Yes, many software updates are simply for new features and options, but not all of them. Software updates often are for patching security gaps that developers have found in their software. If you do not update your software you could be exposing your data to hackers. By keeping updated, you can make sure that you always have the latest form of protection. Against those who would use your data for harm.
Priority Controls, Owners, and Payback: Protect Business Data Program
Use this table to choose first steps that deliver measurable results fast. Costs are ballpark for planning. Your numbers will vary by size and stack.
| Control | Primary Risk Reduced | 30 Day Action | Likely Owner | Typical Cost Band | Payoff Window | Health Metric |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phishing resistant MFA for all users | Account takeover and business email compromise | Enable passkeys or device bound authenticators, start with admins and executives, then expand | IT or Identity team | Low to medium | Immediate | Percentage of active users with phishing resistant MFA |
| Immutable, tested backups | Ransomware and accidental deletion | Turn on immutable storage, schedule quarterly restore tests, document recovery roles | Infrastructure or DevOps | Medium | One quarter | Time to recovery for a representative system |
| SaaS access via single sign on | Password reuse and orphaned accounts | Enforce SSO for critical apps, disable local login, remove dormant accounts | IT and App owners | Low | One month | Number of critical apps behind SSO |
| Endpoint hardening and patch SLAs | Malware, privilege abuse, data theft on lost devices | Enforce disk encryption, screen lock, USB policy, set patch windows with deadlines | IT Operations | Medium | One to two months | Patch latency in days, percentage of encrypted devices |
| Data loss prevention on email and storage | Accidental sharing and quiet exfiltration | Start with basic rules for customer IDs and financial data, alert only for two weeks, then block | Security team | Low to medium | One to two months | True positive rate and incidents remediated |
| OAuth and API token hygiene | Token abuse and silent data access | Inventory tokens, remove unused or high scope tokens, require least privilege scopes | Security or App owners | Low | Weeks | Count of tokens by scope, number without owners |
| Cloud misconfiguration guardrails | Public buckets and open ports | Turn on posture management, block risky configurations at creation time | Cloud platform team | Medium | One quarter | Critical findings resolved within SLA |
| Incident playbooks and drills | Slow or chaotic response | Write short playbooks for top incidents, run one technical drill and one tabletop | Security and IT leadership | Low | Weeks | Mean time to contain in drills |
Metrics that Show Real Progress
Boards and executives want a score that means something. Try a small set that ties to outcomes, then publish them monthly using the program to protect business data.
- Percentage of users with phishing resistant MFA
- Patch latency at the 90th percentile
- Time to detect and time to contain for top incident types
- Backup restore success rate and time to recovery
- Percentage of critical apps behind single sign on
- Number of high risk vendor findings with open remediation items
Security is not something you should take for granted. You wouldn’t leave the front door of your workplace unlocked at the end of the day. So, you shouldn’t for your digital data, either. You should take any necessary measures to keep your data secure since a breach could be devastating to your company. Using these 3 tips will help you go a long way to keeping hackers at bay and your data secure.
