Enterprise data management is more important than it’s ever been, regardless of the size of your company. Whether you’re a small, agile startup or a behemoth corporation, the security of your data is essential.
Today’s cyber attacks are continuing to become more advanced and dangerous by the day, and extremely skilled criminals are determined to access and compromise your data assets. In this article, we’ll focus on mid-to-enterprise organizations and some best practices they can adopt to improve their data management and security.
Why Is Data Management So Important for Mid-to-Enterprise Organizations?
Gartner defines mid-size enterprises as “organizations that have between $50 million and $1 billion in annual revenues and/or 100 to 1000 employees.”
This is a broad bracket, but companies here tend to have more resources than smaller businesses while still often lacking the capability to defend comfortably against cyber threats. On top of that, these organizations are a magnet for attackers, with highly valuable data assets.
Data management is critical for these companies. They tend to use higher volumes of data and are often heavily reliant on this data. It’s essential to make sure data is properly stored, secured, and appropriately organized — an industry-wide task.
Best Practices for Enterprise Data Management & Cybersecurity
Mid-to-enterprise organizations have no choice but to take data management and cybersecurity extremely seriously, and that starts with the foundations. Here are some best practices to follow.
Gain Visibility Into Your Assets
You can’t manage what you don’t know you have. When it comes to data management, you need to understand data inventory, data criticality, and data lifecycle management. Any data management strategy has to start with a thorough audit of your organization, carefully cataloging and organizing all your data assets to gain maximum visibility.
You should understand your needs, risks, the tools you use, and how your data infrastructure operates. Your teams should be able to locate any asset quickly, with minimal confusion or delays. This process allows you to secure your data assets more effectively and quickly notice when something is wrong.
A good practice here is to put the right file naming conventions into place. Consider data sensitivity labeling and data loss prevention (DLP) rules. If data is sensitive or confidential, think about watermarking or encrypting it, especially if you intend to share it outside the organization. If sharing is required outside of corporate control you should also have clear expectations, policies, and agreements with data processors.
Put Access Controls in Place
One of the most important elements of data security is controlling who can access your assets. Sensitive assets must require authorization to access, and people who lack the proper credentials should not be able to access this data.
It’s important to be aware of all the relevant data privacy regulations that apply to your organization — examples might include GDPA, CCPA, and HIPAA. Your access controls should be carefully aligned with these regulations, ensuring you don’t compromise data and run into potentially disastrous legal consequences.
As mentioned above, if you are sharing data outside of the organization’s control, you need to assure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data for those who need it and for only as long as they need it. This means encryption in transit, like email attachments and encryption at rest, like passwords on the file itself. DYOPATH has a great deal of experience and powerful tooling to help you accomplish these goals.
Train Your Staff
All the high-tech tools and cutting-edge technologies in the world won’t save you if your team members aren’t properly trained in data management and security. It’s important to set up regular training sessions so your employees understand labeling conventions, access protocols, best practices for safety, and how to navigate your storage systems.
Training should also focus on more general cybersecurity best practices, such as the importance of secure and regularly updated passwords, how to recognize common threats like phishing, and what to do in the event of a cyber incident.
With the emergence of AI productivity tools, we also recommend including trainings tailored to the protection of data from accidental (and malicious) data breaches. The temptation to refomat a spreadsheet with CoPilot or re-write reports with ChatGPT could be a real risk to data privacy and security, and your teams need to be aware of this.
Take Storage Seriously
Storage is a critical part of data management and security. There are multiple options here — for example, you can store your data in the cloud or build your own on-site storage infrastructure. The second option can be more secure and reliable, but it also requires far more resources and the support of a skilled team.
Whatever storage strategy you choose, you need to be sure that it’s sufficiently secure, easy to navigate for your team members, supports nuanced access controls, and is thoroughly backed up.
Work With an Expert
If you’re a very large, sophisticated organization, building the right infrastructure and processes to manage data securely and effectively can largely be done internally. But for many mid-to-enterprise companies, this simply isn’t possible.
Working with a team of experts can be much more beneficial. Managed service providers can help you access the tools, talent, and resources to put an advanced enterprise data management infrastructure in place and start taking cybersecurity seriously.
Instead of spinning your wheels and seeing your data as a confusing, stressful chore, you can outsource the data management process to a team of seasoned professionals. That’s what we do at DYOPATH — schedule a call with us to learn more.
