Understanding the Importance of Secure Business File Sharing

Secure business file sharing is not just a nice-to-have; it's a must. It's about protecting sensitive data, from financial records to customer information. Without proper security measures, your data is at risk. A single data breach can lead to significant financial losses and damage your reputation.

Additionally, secure file sharing ensures compliance with industry regulations. Whether it's GDPR, HIPAA, or other standards, maintaining compliance under these regulations is key. Overall, secure business file sharing is about safeguarding your business. It's about trust, reliability, and peace of mind.

Risks of Inadequate File Sharing Practices

The most obvious risk is the data breach. Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities to gain access to your network. They can lead to financial losses. They can also damage your reputation, which can be even more costly in the long run.

Moreover, non-compliance with industry regulations can result in hefty fines. It's not just about data security; it's also about legal compliance. Inefficient file sharing can hinder productivity, lead to confusion, mistakes, and a lot of wasted time and money.

What You Can Do to Improve Organizational File Sharing

Encryption: Your First Line of Defense

Encryption is a powerful tool for securing your files. It scrambles your data into unreadable text, which can only be decoded with the right key. During file transfer, encryption ensures that your data remains secure. Even if intercepted, the data is useless without the decryption key. Encryption also protects your files when they are at rest. This means your data remains secure even when stored.

Choosing the Right File Sharing Service

Choosing the right file sharing service is crucial. It should align with your business needs and comply with industry regulations. Look for services that offer added security features. These include encryption, two-factor authentication, and access controls. Also, consider the service's user interface (UI). It should be easy to use to encourage proper file sharing practices among your team.

Access Control 

Access control is a key aspect of secure file sharing. It allows you to manage who can view or edit your files. Permission settings can be customized to fit your business needs. This ensures that sensitive data is only accessible to authorized personnel. Remember, a well-managed access control system can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches.

Educating Your Team 

Educating your team on secure file sharing practices is a must. It's not just about using the right tools but also about understanding the risks and responsibilities. Your team should be aware of potential phishing scams and the importance of strong passwords. Regular training sessions help reinforce the right practices. A well-informed team is your first defense against data breaches.

Cultivating a Culture of Security

Secure business file sharing is not just about the tools you use. It's also about the policies you create and how well you educate your staff. If you would like to learn more about how Patriot Tech Services Inc. can help you protect your business’ data and provide the help you need to ensure you are doing the right things with your file sharing, call us today at 877-874-4629.

Why is Digital Waste Such a Problem?

Let’s consider a hypothetical to highlight why digital waste is so problematic.

Let’s say we have a server farm of maybe ten servers that operate as a private cloud. Seven of these servers (or the data capacity equivalent) are in use, meaning all these servers are running. This also means these servers must be climate-controlled, outfitted with fire suppression systems, and all connected using the requisite networking infrastructure.

All of this uses energy… and that’s just one subset of a business’ IT activities. Internet searches are processed, emails are sent, and cat videos are watched when the boss isn’t looking. All of this energy translates into carbon emissions, with more energy-intensive processes generating more as more energy must be produced to support them. We already talked about private clouds, so add our collective public cloud resources to that, too.

Everything we access online is hosted on servers that need to be powered 24/7. The more data they store, the more power they draw. All of this electricity has to come from somewhere… and in many cases, it comes from processes that release massive amounts of carbon dioxide gas into the air.

So, how does digital waste factor into this?

The More Digital Waste, the More Wasted Energy

Unfortunately, storage infrastructure cannot differentiate between important and unimportant data… it just sees data, and as such, it all takes up resources. While this might not seem like the biggest deal on a micro-scale—sure, maybe you have some old company pictures saved on the server that you’ll never use again—it all builds up to compete with some countries. Digital activity already outpaces the pollution rates of countries like Norway and Switzerland and is poised to break the records set by the world's top five most polluting countries by next year.

What Can Be Done to Reduce Digital Waste?

Many things can be done to reduce the energy expended on data storage, both on an organizational and individual level.

In terms of the organization:

• Investing in cloud storage can reduce the amount of wasted storage space in an in-house infrastructure.
• Adjusting the power settings on your business’ hardware helps cap energy expenditures when not in use.
• Be diligent about deleting data no longer needed from your storage, the recycle bin, and your email inbox.
• Try to minimize messages that don’t need to be sent.

In terms of personal changes:

• Be more selective about the photos you save and store.
• Activate dark mode on your devices.
• Close applications and programs when you aren’t actively using them.
• Deactivate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity when not in active use.

At the End of the Day, Reducing Digital Waste is a Net Gain

Reach out to Patriot Tech Services Inc. for more ways you can optimize your business’ technology use! Give us a call at 877-874-4629 to learn how we can help.

“BDR” is Shorthand for Backup and Disaster Recovery

Backup and Disaster Recovery is more or less what it sounds like… a strategy that accounts for your data’s survival and determines how best to resume your operations after some disaster strikes. Backup refers to your business having spare copies of its data to fall back on should something happen to its operational copy due to some attack or mishap. Disaster recovery focuses on what needs to be done after any kind of catastrophe—natural or man-made—impacts a business so that an acceptable level of operations can be resumed as quickly as possible to minimize the downtime that impacts you.

Combining these two preparations into a single strategy helps you better protect your business from prolonged interruptions and their consequences.

Without this guardrail, any disaster could potentially take down a business. 

BDR is Critical for Any Business

Whatever the inciting incident, you could see serious penalties to your finances and your reputation in your community, and plenty of potential incidents could incite data loss. A cyberattack is one example, but so are system crashes, human error, weather-induced power surges, or blackouts.

Whatever the case, would you be able to trust a business that didn’t have precautions to protect its resources fully? Would you want to work with a business that may have allowed your data to be stolen?

Probably not… and unfortunately, your clients, customers, and patrons won’t either.

Being prepared with a carefully considered and implemented BDR strategy helps you avoid these impacts by helping you get your business back on track as quickly as possible.

What Must Be Involved in Your BDR Strategy?

Like most strategies, a proper backup and disaster recovery strategy relies on a few elements working together to ensure that everything is adequately addressed. 

First of all, you need to know that your data is being backed up regularly and that these backups abide by the 3-2-1 Backup Rule:

• At least three copies of your data exist at any given time
• These copies exist on at least two different storage mediums
• At least one copy is kept in offsite storage, ideally the cloud

Once you have attended to your backups, you need to confirm that they work as intended and that the rest of your disaster recovery planning is effective. Testing them by running your team through simulated disasters to check their readiness and trying to operate off your backups alone helps you accomplish this, as it shows you where more work needs to be done.

Whatever Your Business Does, Whatever Size, BDR is Critical

Considering how critical a business’ data is to its success, having a strategy to protect it seems like a no-brainer. However, while we’ve outlined the basic principles here, there’s much more your business needs to do to ensure the backup and disaster recovery strategy you’ve implemented will work effectively. 

That said, you don’t need to go about it single-handedly… we’re here to help.

Reach out to us at 877-874-4629 to find out more about how Patriot Tech Services Inc. can assist you with your data backup and disaster recovery preparedness, your overall business continuity, and your essential technology management and maintenance!