With the rise of remote working due to COVID-19, and as technology develops increased functionality, the requirement for a watertight data security strategy is more important than ever before. The world has transitioned to using living rooms as offices, and many companies face new challenges to protect their data and securely share confidential information online. For the time being, working from home is here to stay, so how can you manage your security risk to accommodate the “new normal”?

According to the Financial Services Forum, cyberattacks targeting financial services firms are on the rise, with 93% of financial services organizations experiencing cyber threats in the previous year. Here are the top five causes of breaches:

1 Hacking (48%)

If there is a weak link in the system, the chances are criminal hackers will find it. These weaknesses will then be exploited to access sensitive data or launch further attacks.

2 Malware (30%)

A malicious software that seeks to invade, damage, or disable computers, computer systems, networks, document-sharing platforms, virtual data rooms (VDRs), tablets, and mobile devices. It often takes partial control over a device’s operations and can steal data, sometimes without your knowing.

3 Human Error (17%)

More often than not, an employee sending an email to the wrong person by mistake is usually far from malicious. However, this can be detrimental to data security and escalate to a breach.

4 Social Engineering (17%)

Usually a multistep attack, this technique uses psychological manipulation to trick users into making security mistakes or giving away confidential information without realizing it.

5 Privilege Misuse (12%)

This takes the form of either abusing access to confidential information or ignoring access policies by activities such as copy and pasting data or screen sharing.

Source: https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/reports/DBIR_2018_Report.pdf
 

So how can you reduce risk and prevent exposure? Ensuring your security software is up to date is a simple but crucial practice to avoid hackers identifying any weak spots. By regularly carrying out risk assessments on your data—with a focus on how this information is shared—you can build data security into your document and data-sharing workflows.

If you’re looking for a secure system to mitigate risk as much as possible, TransPerfect offers an award-winning intelligent document protection technology, TransCEND. This platform helps share sensitive legal and financial information and achieves security, privacy, and compliance objectives by quickly and securely protecting files being shared to third-party users, controlling access in real time, and tracking user activity within the virtual data room. By using TransCEND for document sharing, viewing, redaction, and translation (both human and machine), data is shared securely with a controlled user group only.

Without a doubt, technology and business requirements will continue to evolve, and as they do, it’s vital that companies stay as protected as possible to keep their data, customers, and employees safe. Contact us today to discuss your data security strategy.