I’m sure you know yourself. You know your business. Of course you want to protect everything in it. Right?
Ask any business owner – they will tell you their time is their most precious asset. With that said, we all want to spend as little time as possible worrying about security and more time on tasks we actually want to do. On the other hand, spending too little time on security can lead to disastrous outcomes. Therefore, we really must aim to yield a greater ‘ROI’ on the time we spend on security.
Ask yourself these questions to keep time on your side:
- What is most confidential to you in terms of your business data?
- Is there anything you cannot afford to lose?
- Is any of your data irreplaceable?
- What would cause the most damage to your business?
- How would a security breach affect your reputation?
- How would you deal with the financial consequences caused by any of these?
What of the following do you value most?
- Photos
- Credit Card Details
- Bank Account
- Details
- Personal Information
- Account Information – Bank, LinkedIn, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal
- Password Information
- Primary Email
- Bitcoin Wallet
- Browser History
- Special Files
Imagine somebody stole, destroyed or encrypted your files so you could no longer use them…
Or a criminal were to get their mitts on them…
How would you react to seeing your files suddenly appear online for the whole world to see?
Now look at your list again – how valuable are your assets with a second glance?
Each item on this list is ‘as precious an asset’ as the time you spend on security.
These are the things you truly value most.
Use this list to focus your energy when applying security and you will halve the time you spend on it.
Consider carefully the value of what you could lose: the cost of recovering what has been lost and the financial implications of losing information about others.
So what data is important and what is not?
One perspective could be that there is not much point in spending hours backing up files that can easily be replaced when energies are better placed preserving data that truly matters.
On the other hand, a counter-argument could be that all data is sensitive and mission critical – nowadays, systems like datto are so reliable, cost effective and easy to use it in fact protects everything and actually costs more to review what you are storing.
Recovering your data expediently will enable you to carry on your activities and processes – more or less without interruption. But what are the legal implications of losing data? What are the financial implications of having your systems compromised? What will your customers do knowing that their personal information might have been stolen?
I was discussing this with my C.T.O Richard Palmer who certainly knows how to get a rally going!
What do you think?
About the Author
Huw Tremlett works for Fifosys: a London based vendor-independent, technology infrastructure development and outsourced managed services provider. Fifosys specialises in providing the level and detail of support that large scale enterprises expect but delivered for the SME and mid-market business. Using an ITIL and Prince 2-based best practice approach to IT support, Fifosys has built a reputation as a trusted partner with its customers, providing both first-class IT support services and the highest levels of advice, guidance and reporting.
