Data Protection in the Cloud: Challenges and Best Practices 2024

As businesses in Long Island, NY, continue to harness the power of the cloud, understanding the intricacies of cloud data security becomes increasingly important. Despite these concerns, only 20% of organizations assess their cloud security in real time. There needs to be a more proactive defense for Long Island businesses. This article discusses the critical challenges and best practices for securing your cloud data to protect against cyber threats.  

The Biggest Challenges For Your Cloud Data Security in 2024 

Working through the issues associated with cloud data security in 2024 comes with unique challenges. Businesses in Long Island, NY, struggle with the complexities of safeguarding their digital assets in the cloud. We understand these challenges at LI Tech Solutions and are here to guide you through them. Here are the top challenges you face when it comes to cloud data security:  

  • Data Loss and Leakage: One of the biggest concerns for 69% of organizations is data loss and leakage that can devastate your business. Ensuring your data remains intact and confidential requires constant attention to security protocols and infrastructure resilience. 
  • Privacy and Confidentiality: You face challenges associated with protecting your business’s sensitive information by avoiding unauthorized access and exposure. That allows you to maintain trust and compliance. 
  • Accidental Exposure of Credentials: Around 44% of companies risk mishandling credentials. These types of slip-ups can lead to unauthorized access, requiring strict control measures and awareness training. 
  • Insufficient Real-time Security Posture Assessment: The lack of continuous assessment can lead to overlooked vulnerabilities and delayed responses to threats. 
  • Qualified Personnel Shortage: The cloud security sector needs help finding skilled professionals. This gap can result in misconfigured cloud-managed services and heightened security risks. 

Navigating these challenges demands expertise and experience. LI Tech Solutions offers comprehensive data protection and cybersecurity support. We help you venture into secure and successful cloud computing.  

Callout 1: Five biggest cloud data security challenges in 2024

Preparing for Tomorrow With the Best Practices in Cloud Data Security 

Once you understand the challenges, you can implement the right cloud data security measures to protect your business. Our focus is empowering your Long Island business with the knowledge and tools to protect your cloud infrastructure against modern threats. 

1. Implementing Robust Authentication and Access Controls 

Cloud data security requires robust authentication and access controls. Despite the known risks, 43% of organizations do not have mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) for console users. This can leave a gaping hole in your security posture. MFA reduces the risk of unauthorized access by combining something you know (like a password) with something you have (like a smartphone app that generates a one-time code).

You should prioritize establishing clear protocols that dictate who can access various data tiers. Tailoring access ensures that sensitive information remains secure and only your employees with a legitimate need have access. That strengthens the overall cloud data security framework.

2. The Role of Encryption in Cloud Security 

Encryption is a critical safeguard for cloud data security. Encrypting data with protocols like AES and secure communication protocols like SSL/TLS protects your business against cyber threats. Your data remains undecipherable to unauthorized entities even if intercepted. Considering the intricate nature of digital threats, effectively employing encryption preserves the integrity and confidentiality of your sensitive business data. In tech-savvy areas like Long Island, NY, it is even more important to integrate these encryption standards into your cloud security strategy to protect your digital assets from evolving cybersecurity risks.  

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3. Proactive Monitoring and Auditing: The Backbone of Cloud Security 

Additionally, the dynamic nature of cloud computing requires continuous monitoring and auditing to detect and respond to security incidents as quickly as possible. Establishing a system that offers real-time visibility can make the difference between a secure cloud environment and a compromised one. This proactive approach allows companies to identify threats and remediate them quickly.

Ultimately, this protects the integrity of your cloud-based assets.  Incorporating regular audits and monitoring systems for businesses leveraging cloud data protection solutions ensures that security protocols adapt to new threats. This creates a robust defense mechanism to safeguard against the sophisticated cyber threats that target valuable data in the cloud. 

4. Preparing for the Inevitable Through Data Protection Provider Incident Response 

When it comes to cloud data security, having a solid incident response plan is non-negotiable. When a security event such as a data breach, DoS attack, or account compromise occurs, the speed and effectiveness of your response mean everything. You must identify your critical assets and establish documented procedures for swift and effective analysis, containment, remediation, and recovery.

Running periodic incident response simulations helps fine-tune your strategy, so your team can act decisively under pressure. These proactive measures for securing data in the cloud help minimize the impact of security incidents while maintaining trust and ensuring business continuity.  

Callout 3: #3. #4 cloud data security challenges- 6 facts

5. Compliance Controls: Navigating Regulatory Requirements 

In sectors like healthcare and finance, adhering to compliance standards in cloud data security is necessary and a mandate. Stringent data security, privacy, and sovereignty regulations govern these industries. Familiarizing yourself with relevant compliance frameworks and identifying necessary controls such as storage encryption, access management, network security, and logging is fundamental.

Regular audits to validate these controls are essential in demonstrating your commitment to regulatory compliance. This proactive approach helps avoid costly legal ramifications and reinforces your reputation as a trustworthy and compliant organization.  

6. Fostering a Security-Conscious Culture in Long Island, NY

Creating a security-conscious culture within your organization is paramount for effective cloud data security. It’s about more than just protocols—it’s about embedding security-minded practices throughout your organizational fabric. Education on cloud security risks and responsibilities should be an ongoing effort, integrating these principles from the early stages of application development through to daily operations.

Developing comprehensive playbooks that outline tailored cloud-use policies and procedures enhances the security framework. Encouraging best practices in access management, remote work, and password policies fortifies your organization’s defenses. Your cloud infrastructure stands resilient against the evolving threats in the digital world.  

Callout 4: #5. #6 cloud data security challenges- 3 facts

7. Partnering With the Right Data Protection Cloud Providers 

Choosing a reputable cloud security provider bolsters your organization’s defenses and cloud infrastructure. Top providers like Microsoft and AWS don’t just deliver tools but entire enterprise data protection solutions designed to address complex challenges. These providers continually update their services to combat the latest cyber security threats, offering you cutting-edge protection. 

Integration with these providers means access to advanced threat detection, incident response capabilities, and compliance management tools. For your business in Long Island, NY, partnering with such providers means securing your operations against a landscape of evolving cyber risks. This strategic alliance not only strengthens your security posture but also empowers you with the resources to focus on core business activities, knowing your data security in cloud infrastructures is in expert hands.  

Callout 5: Partner with the right data protection cloud providers- 3 facts

Strengthening Cloud Security in 2024 With LI Tech’s Advanced Cloud Security Solutions 

LI Tech Solutions stands at the forefront of cloud data security and IT support for businesses, offering advanced solutions to safeguard your digital assets. As a leading managed IT services provider in Long Island, we are ready to enhance your digital defenses. Want to find out how your business can benefit from these cloud security best practices? Contact us today for a free consultation and propel your business into a secure digital future.

Are You Properly Backing Up Your Business Data?

Every modern organization collects a wealth of data on its customers, clients, and more. But that data must be protected and easily retrieved in the event of an IT infrastructure outage or cyberattack. This guide explains why you should properly back up your business data and how data protection solutions safeguard your data for maximum protection.

Why Back Up Business Data?

Businesses just like yours must back up crucial data for two key reasons:

  • Modern legislation such as the CCPA and GDPR fines companies for not properly protecting and backing up customer or client data. Therefore, you need to back up business data so you have it for easy retrieval by your clients and customers.
  • Losing data can significantly and negatively influence business operations. It can make it harder for you to keep your organization secure, lead to lost sales, and more.

Imagine a scenario in which you have all your customer relationship data included on a single server. However, that server crashes and the data is lost. At that point, you now have to start from scratch rebuilding your consumer relationships, including the contact information, their preferred methods of contact, and more.  

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What Data Should You Back Up?

Backing up all business data is important, but two specific types of data are more vital than others.

Customer Data

As touched on above, you must keep sensitive client or customer data secured and backed up at all times. Customer data includes personal identifying information, order histories, personal preferences, and much more.

Company Data

You’ll also want to protect company-specific data, like passwords for your servers, sensitive organizational information like your order flow or vendor ID codes, and so on.

The last thing you want is a cybercriminal gaining access to sensitive corporate data, then blackmailing you by threatening to release that information to your competitors or your customers. 

Read more in our blog: What Is Data Protection? Why It’s Important and Why Cybersecurity Can’t Be Separate

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Best Data Protection Solutions | Backup Technologies and Methods for Businesses in Long Island, NYC

Given the importance of backing up crucial company data, it’s wise to implement a back up policy ASAP. But many companies may not properly back up their business data.

For example, they may simply copy over important files once a month onto a separate hard drive. Or they might use secondary or subpar technologies to back up server files, only to find that a server outage results in most of the data being lost during a single unlucky incident.

If your company hopes to back up data properly, you need to use the right technologies, methodologies, and services. Data protection solutions include:

  • Cloud data backup technology. By integrating with the cloud, you can save your data off-site or in multiple locations, allowing easy retrieval in the event of an outage
  • Regular backup sessions. By regularly backing up company or client data, you’ll never run into a problem where you forgot to back up data after a major sale or meeting, then lost it because of a crash or attack
  • Data backup virus protection. Cybercriminals may try to crash your IT infrastructure specifically to get to sensitive data. Proper IT security policies and managed services can help you prevent this outcome

Read more in our blog: 4 Dangerous Ransomware Myths Proven False

How LI Tech Solutions Insulates Your Business from Disaster

Above all else, the best way to properly back up your business data is to rely on managed services providers like LI Tech Solutions.

As dedicated managed IT services providers in Long Island, New York, our enterprise data protection solutions and other services are just what you need to make sure your data is backed up safely and correctly every single time.

Disaster Recovery Services

LI Tech’s disaster recovery services are designed to insulate your business and sensitive data from all manner of hazards, ranging from cloud or other technology breakdowns to operator errors to cyber sabotage to environmental calamities and more.

Specifically, we take several key steps to safeguard your data, apps, and systems before that crucial digital information is lost. These steps include:

  • Identifying any application interdependencies and automating shutdowns or reboots in the right order based on tested scenarios
  • End-to-end data encryption, which acts as a flexible and effective safeguard for any environment, whether it’s the cloud, virtual, on-premises, or something else
  • Support for 20 platforms and workloads with as much scaling as your organization needs. You can choose a data backup location such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, and more
  • Regular backup analysis and improvements to protect your business, its data, and its people from ransomware, phishing, and other forms of cyber attacks

If your business ever encounters a disaster that causes its infrastructure to collapse or its data to be lost, you can rest assured that LI Tech’s backups will have you “back up” and running in no time.

LI Tech Data Protection Solutions: Scheduled Backup Services

More than that, LI Tech takes responsibility for scheduling and implementing regular data backups for your organization. With regular backups, all crucial data should be secured on the cloud or elsewhere. You’ll never run into the disaster scenario where sensitive data created or collected a day previously is lost because of an ill-timed server outage.

As an added benefit, when you hire us to schedule your data backup services, your people can focus on other elements of your business.   

Data Protection in the Cloud: Challenges and Best Practices 2024

Callout 4: Backup business data with managed services LI Tech Solutions- three reasons

Full IT Infrastructure Review | Long Island Tech Solutions

In addition to the above services, LI Tech Solutions will plan and carry out a full IT infrastructure review for your organization if you choose. The infrastructure review can identify:

  • Potential points of weakness in your IT infrastructure, like your servers or hard drives
  • How a data loss could potentially occur

Armed with this information, we’ll then upgrade or streamline your IT infrastructure depending on what you need. Such improvements can lower the likelihood of data loss entirely or protect your business from catastrophe.

Contact LI Tech for Data Protection Solutions in Long Island, NYC

All in all, LI Tech is the number one managed IT services provider on Long Island, NYC. We serve brands just like yours by offering not only disaster recovery and data backup services but also IT security services and more. Contact us today to see how we can help your brand thrive in the modern digital environment!

What Is Data Protection? Why It’s Important and Why Cybersecurity Can’t Be Separate

A typical data breach in the United States costs around $9.44 million—more than twice the global average. Healthcare is the top sector affected by pricey data breaches, but any business can be severely affected. Data protection and cybersecurity should be a top concern for Long Island, NYC business owners. A data breach can threaten your profits, your reputation, your employees, and your customers. It can also put your enterprise at legal risk.

If you’re wondering exactly what data protection entails – and why you should make it a priority – this article will answer some of your questions. It can be hard to distinguish between data protection and cybersecurity measures, since the two are so intertwined. Some people view cybersecurity as a technical field, and data security as more direct safeguarding measures. But this view is an oversimplification of both. We’ll explore the relationship between data protection and cybersecurity, and we’ll also take a look at how LI Tech Solutions can help you shield your business from harm.

Streamlining Healthcare Data Management with Managed IT Services in Long Island

Callout 1: Quote from text about data protection for Long Island and NYC businesses

What Is Data Protection | Long Island Tech Solutions Explains

Data protection is the act of shielding your information from unwanted access. You need to take steps to make sure sensitive information isn’t altered or destroyed—or leaked to unauthorized parties. LI Tech Solutions is the best cybersecurity company in Long Island, NYC. So naturally, we handle all aspects of data protection, including:

  • Backup solutions, such as cloud and on-site architecture and centralized real-time dashboards
  • Disaster recovery solutions including end-to-end encryption

What Is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is a more generalized term that describes the “art” of protecting digital networks, devices and data – and ensuring its privacy and accessibility. Malware, hacking, and the exploitation of programming errors that cause vulnerabilities are just a few of the threats that cybersecurity experts have to combat.

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Why Data Protection Is So Crucial for Businesses in Long Island, NYC

At LI Tech Solutions, we understand that if disaster or sabotage strikes your business, your quick response is critical. Your data doesn’t just sit motionless. It travels from one point to another, and it’s exposed to multiple vulnerabilities along the way. There’s no such thing as data that’s free from any possible threat.

These are some primary reasons you should invest in state-of-the-art data protection for your enterprise.

Keep Employee and Client Data Confidential

You probably have access to sensitive data about your team members and customers alike. Personally identifiable information is a broad category that includes direct identifiers and quasi-identifiers. In other words, it refers to data that can be used on its own to identify a person, or data that can be combined with other bits of information to build an identity.

Direct identifiers include information such as:

  • Social Security numbers
  • Driver’s licenses
  • First and last names

Four types of indirect identifiers include:

  • Race
  • Gender
  • Birth date
  • Zip code

When you allow unauthorized users to access any personal information, you expose employees and/or customers to identity theft, fraud, and other serious threats.

Understanding IAM in the Modern Cybersecurity Landscape: Challenges and Solutions

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Stay in Compliance with Regulatory Bodies

The GDPR and CCPA are designed to protect individuals and consumers from harm by regulating entities that access and store their data. The GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, applies to all businesses that conduct any transactions within the EU. The CCPA, or California Consumer Privacy Act, safeguards consumers’ rights to control their own personal information. Failure to comply with regulatory bodies that govern your business can lead to legal action and fees: up to $7500 per violation of the CCPA, and a wide range of penalties for violating the GDPR. Clearly, prevention is the best approach.

Build Consumer and Market Trust

A data breach can harm your brand’s value and reputation in ways that are hard to repair. Today’s consumers care more about whether their personal information is protected than ever before. If your clients are involved in a data breach, they’ll probably stop giving you their business. Investors are also likely to shy away from companies with a reputation for poor security measures.

Protect Your Intellectual Property

Businesses in the United States lose between $180 billion and $540 billion every year when their trade secrets are stolen. On top of that, they’re often subject to hefty legal fees as they seek to rebuild after the damage caused by a data breach. When you lose control of the things that make your business unique, it can be hard to measure the financial losses involved.

Why Data Protection Is So Crucial for Businesses | Find The Best Tech Solutions in Long Island, NY

Business owners often make the mistake of handling data protection and cybersecurity as two separate entities. However, this approach is costly since it involves multiple teams – and it’s also not the most effective way to ward off threats. Let’s examine a few key reasons.

Threats Are Complex and Evolving

As technology evolves, digital threats become more sophisticated to keep pace. Those with malicious intent will stop at nothing to gain access to your data, and their skill sets are more comprehensive than ever. To stop them, you need a multi-layered approach that integrates data protection and cybersecurity skills.

Cybercriminals Can Bypass Data Protection Measures

Data protection solutions are effective for what they’re designed to do. But cybercriminals can sometimes find a way around them. For example, MFA (multi-factor authentication) might protect your devices from access by non-employees. But cybercriminals can conduct a brute force attack to simply figure out both points of authentication through trial and error.

Data Protection Skills Are Necessary When Cybercrime Strikes

After a major cybersecurity breach, your top priority is making your data secure again. This does mean implementing measures that directly address the source of the breach. But it also means taking a comprehensive approach and revisiting all your data protection policies to safeguard against the next attack.

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How to Approach Data Protection and Cybersecurity Together | LI Tech Solutions From NY Explains

We’ve got a few tips that can help you form an integrated approach to protect your business.

Maintain a Company-Wide Culture of Data Safety

When data is handled carelessly, hackers can more easily gain access to your systems. The best way to safeguard your information is to have your data protection and cybersecurity specialists work together – and to frequently educate your entire team about proper procedures.

Ultimately, humans are often the vulnerable points in an organization that bad actors will exploit to access sensitive data. Everyone in your organization – not just your security specialists – is responsible to keep your information safe.

Opt for End-to-End Solutions

An end-to-end solution is one that provides a complete answer to a problem, without having to rely on external sources. LI Tech Solutions offers end-to-end services that protect your data from start to finish, anticipating and addressing threats on all fronts.

Partner With Specialists Who Have Multiple Services to Offer

Why hire a team of data protection specialists if they can’t handle other cybersecurity needs? Why invest in a cybersecurity partnership if you’ll need to find someone else to handle your data protection? If Long Island government systems are vulnerable to crippling cyberattacks, it’s clear that cybercrime is a significant threat to local businesses, too. Ultimately, the best cybersecurity company in Long Island, NYC will bring a comprehensive skill set to the table. 

IT Services for Law Firms In Long Island Boost Productivity and Security

Handle All Your Data Protection and Cybersecurity Needs With the Best MSP Services in LI and New York City

As the best MSP on Long Island, LI Tech Solutions offers all the services you need – without the burden of maintaining full-time IT staff. Is it time to outsource your IT support needs to the experts? Call 516.210.6400 today and ask for a free consultation and technology assessment!

Charging in Public Places? Watch Out for “Juice Jacking”

Airports, hotels, cafés, even shopping malls, offer public charging points where you can boost your phone or laptop battery on the go. They’ve been in the news after the FBI recently tweeted advice to stop using them. Crooks have figured out how to hijack USB ports to install malware and monitoring software onto devices as they charge. The security risk …
Read More

Data Backup Is Not Enough, You Also Need Data Protection

The need to back up data has been around since floppy disks. Data loss happens due to viruses, hard drive crashes, and other mishaps. Most people using any type of technology have experienced data loss at least once.

There are about 140,000 hard drive crashes in the US weekly. Every five years, 20% of SMBs suffer data loss due to a major disaster. This has helped to drive a robust cloud backup market that continues to grow.

But one thing that’s changed with data backup in the last few years is security. Simply backing up data so you don’t lose it, isn’t enough anymore. Backing up has morphed into data protection.

What does this mean?

It means that backups need more cybersecurity protection. They face threats such as sleeper ransomware and supply chain attacks. Cloud-based backup has the benefit of being convenient, accessible, and effective. But there is also a need for certain security considerations with an online service.

Companies need to consider data protection when planning a backup and recovery strategy. The tools used need to protect against the growing number of threats.

Some of the modern threats to data backups include:

  • Data Center Outage: The “cloud” basically means data on a server. That server is internet accessible. Those servers can crash. Data centers holding the servers can also have outages.
  • Sleeper Ransomware: This type of ransomware stays silent after infecting a device. The goal is to have it infect all backups. Then, when it’s activated, the victim doesn’t have a clean backup to restore.
  • Supply Chain Attacks: Supply chain attacks have been growing. They include attacks on cloud vendors that companies use. Those vendors suffer a cyberattack that then spreads throughout their clients.
  • Misconfiguration: Misconfiguration of security settings can be a problem. It can allow attackers to gain access to cloud storage. Those attackers can then download and delete files as they like.

What to Look for in a Data Protection Backup System

Just backing up data isn’t enough. You need to make sure the application you use provides adequate data protection. Here are some of the things to look for when reviewing a backup solution.

Ransomware Prevention

Ransomware can spread throughout a network to infect any data that exists. This includes data on computers, servers, and mobile devices. It also includes data in cloud platforms syncing with those devices.

95% of ransomware attacks also try to infect data backup systems.

It’s important that any data backup solution you use have protection from ransomware. This type of feature restricts automated file changes that can happen to documents.

Continuous Data Protection

Continuous data protection is a feature that will back up files as users make changes. This differs from systems that back up on a schedule, such as once per day.

Continuous data protection ensures that the system captures the latest file changes. This mitigates data loss that can occur if a system crashes before the next backup. With the speed of data generation these days, losing a day’s worth of data can be very costly.

Threat Identification

Data protection incorporates proactive measures to protect files. Look for threat identification functions in a backup service. Threat identification is a type of malware and virus prevention tool.

It looks for malware in new and existing backups. This helps stop sleeper ransomware and similar malware from infecting all backups.

Zero-Trust Tactics

Cybersecurity professionals around the world promote zero-trust security measures. This includes measures such as multifactor authentication and application safelisting.

A zero-trust approach holds that all users and applications need ongoing authentication. So, just because a user is logged into the system today, doesn’t mean they are completely trusted.

Some of the zero-trust features to look for include:

  • Multifactor authentication
  • Distinct file and folder permissions
  • Contextual authentication
  • Verification of permissions for file changes

Backup Redundancy

If you back up to a USB drive or CD, you have one copy of those files. If something happens to that copy, you could experience data loss.

Cloud backup providers should have backup redundancy in place. This means that the server holding your data mirrors that data to another server. This prevents data loss in the case of a server crash, natural disaster, or cyberattack.

Air Gapping for More Sensitive Data

Air gapping is a system that keeps a copy of your data offline or separated in another way. This would entail making a second backup copy of your data. Then, putting it on another server. A server disconnected from external sources.

This is a feature that you may want to seek out if you deal with highly sensitive data. It helps to ensure that you have at least one other copy of your backup. A copy walled off from common internet-based attacks.

Are You Properly Backing Up Your Business Data?

Need Help With Secure Backup & Data Protection Solutions?

Have you updated your backup process for today’s threats? Give us a call today to schedule a chat about data backup and protection. LI Tech Solutions, a Long Island  managed services provider, can help!

 


Featured Image Credit

This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.

Enterprise Data Protection Solutions for Small and Medium Businesses in Long Island, NYC

As a small or medium business owner, you know that data security is essential for your organization’s success. However, as your business grows, it becomes more and more challenging to protect your data. Sadly, small and medium business owners face data breaches all too often. In fact, they’re involved in about 43% of all data breaches. Unfortunately, if you fail to set up adequate enterprise data protection for small and medium businesses, you can end up facing significant costs.

To avoid a disaster, it’s essential to find the best enterprise data protection solutions on Long Island; many MSP companies like LI Tech Solutions can help. Read on to learn more about the best data protection solutions for Long Island businesses, and why they’re so important!

What Is Enterprise Data Protection | Long Island Tech Solutions Explains

Enterprise data is information that users in your organization share. It might be shared across multiple sites or multiple devices. Enterprise data protection refers to practices, policies, and technologies that protect your data from being lost, stolen or corrupted.  

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Best MSP Partner in New York: How Enterprise Data Protection Affects Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

The success of your business rises and falls on data. As technology advances, this statement becomes more and more true. That’s why enterprise data protection solutions on Long Island are so vital. Unfortunately, your small or medium-sized business faces many potential data security threats. These tend to fall into the following categories.

Bad Actors

Bad actors are people who want to exploit your enterprise data for personal gain. This could include external threats, like disgruntled customers or former employees, competitors, or hacking groups. They could also come from within your organization. Your employees likely have access to sensitive data, which can be stolen, ransomed or sold without your knowledge.

Unintentional Loss of Data

Unfortunately, your data can also be compromised by accident. Software can become corrupted, hardware can fail, or a power outage can cause data to be lost. Employees who fail to follow proper procedures can cause data to be lost through carelessness. For example, failure to shut down systems correctly or maintain hardware properly can lead to costly data loss.

Natural Disasters

When your data is stored on hardware, it’s vulnerable to physical threats. Fires, floods, windstorms or thunderstorms, earthquakes, and power outages can damage hardware and cause data to be lost. FEMA reports that between 40% and 60% of all small businesses are unable to recover after a major natural disaster.  

Callout 2: Why you need enterprise data protection for small and medium-sized Long Island businesses

Inadequate Enterprise Data Protection | Long Island Tech Examines the Costs

When your enterprise data is compromised, the price tag can be steep. On average, you can expect to pay around $160 for every individual record involved in the breach. When you consider how many separate records your organization probably holds, it’s clear that a data breach can be devastating. Costs are often incurred in many unexpected categories, but these are a few of the most common.

Security Experts

After a data breach, you’ll need to hire experts to help you continue operating and assess the damage done. You’ll also need help forming a plan to prevent a future crisis.

Legal Experts

Depending on the nature of the data breach, you may need legal counsel. You may face lawsuits, fines, or other legal consequences as a result of leaked data.

Damage Control

Your company’s reputation can be severely damaged by a data breach. You can hire a reputation management service to try to repair the damage, but this comes at a steep price.   

Cybersecurity Solutions for Long Island Businesses: Managing Compliance and Mitigating Risks

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Compliance and Enterprise Data Protection Solutions on Long Island, NYC | LI Tech

There are many reasons why finding the best data protection solutions for Long Island businesses is so important. One important reason is that your business must remain in compliance with applicable regulations. When data is lost or breached, you may face costly consequences for violating these regulations.

GDPR Compliance

If your business is regulated by the General Data Protection Regulation, you need to handle your contacts’ personal information with special care. You’ll need to obtain, store, and manage customers’ information in appropriate ways to protect their privacy.

HIPAA Compliance

HIPAA refers to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This federal law requires you to protect patients’ health information to maintain their privacy. Small businesses often struggle to remain in HIPAA compliance. However, failure to do so can lead to costly audits and fines.

A Long Island MSP’s Best Practices For Enterprise Data Protection

What is enterprise data protection for Long Island businesses? Your IT team is an important component of data protection. However, business owners are also responsible to help protect their data. Here are a few steps you can take to achieve enterprise data protection for small and medium sized businesses.

Educate Employees Regularly

Do your employees know how to handle sensitive data? A single training session is not enough, since you periodically onboard new team members. You’ll need to schedule regular sessions to ensure your employees are up to date on policies.

Control Data Access

Does everyone in your organization have access to all your data? This creates unnecessary risk and raises the likelihood of a data breach. Make sure to provide data access only to those team members who truly need it.  

Callout 4: four steps a Long Island MSP can take for enterprise data protection

Require Secure Authentication Practices

One of the best data protection solutions for Long Island businesses is to require robust authentication. Multi-factor authentication is a simple yet effective way to keep your data from falling into the wrong hands.

Clearly Define a Data Protection Policy

Your employees won’t be able to follow procedures if they’re not spelled out clearly. Effective enterprise data protection solutions on Long Island start with a clearly defined policy for all employees to follow. This should be a living document that develops over time, as your business grows and technology changes.

Finding the Best MSP Data Protection Solutions for Long Island Businesses

What is enterprise data protection for Long Island businesses? This term refers to a variety of steps you can take to keep your information safe. However, not all enterprise data protection solutions on Long Island are the same. You need the best possible service at an affordable price.

LI Tech’s Cost-Effective Enterprise Data Protection for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses in Long Island, NYC

Hiring full-time IT staff for your business can be expensive. Instead, it’s best to have the flexibility to call your IT team when you need to. Partnering with LI Tech Solutions allows you to work with trusted professionals without adding more full-time staff to your payroll. Enterprise data protection for small and medium sized businesses can be much more affordable when you adopt this model!

Comprehensive

Hiring different IT professionals for different issues that arise can be frustrating. You need a team that does it all. LI Tech Solutions takes both proactive and reactive steps to protect your data, so we can handle all your data protection needs.  

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LI Tech Solutions: The Best MSP and Enterprise Data Protection Solutions on Long Island, NYC

Do you need enterprise data protection solutions on Long Island, NYC? When you partner with LI Tech Solutions, you get the best of both worlds. You’ll gain an IT partner to handle the comprehensive data protection needs of your business. However, you can avoid the cost of adding additional full-time staff to your team.

As industry leaders in enterprise data protection for small and medium sized businesses, we offer the peace of mind you need to run your business. We provide the best data protection solutions for Long Island NYC businesses, so you can focus on what you do best: running your business. Call 516.210.6400 today to set up a free consultation and technology assessment.

Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Transformation in Long Island, NY

Every business needs to be prepared for the worst. It’s not enough to have a simple data backup app for your servers or customer data. You need to have a detailed disaster recovery plan and business continuity plan ready to go if disaster strikes.

In addition, it’s often wise to practice business continuity transformation. By constantly improving and evolving your business continuity plan, your organization will be better equipped to handle new cyber threats on the horizon.

But that’s a lot of responsibility and work, especially for smaller organizations that may not have the manpower to focus on all of these elements. Fortunately, managed IT service providers in Long Island can provide your enterprise with the disaster recovery and business continuity transformation services you need.

What Is a Business Continuity Plan?

Business continuity means ensuring that your business’s operations remain stable and available to customers during a disaster or IT issue. A good business continuity plan includes several key components:

  • One or more recovery personnel, who manage the recovery process to restore systems ASAP
  • A detailed recovery procedure to help restore key business functions and to maintain continuity of business operations as much as possible
  • A data backup plan and method. This allows the affected organization to recover valuable data and ensure its security seamlessly

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Business continuity plans are vital so that companies don’t lose customers during service or power outages and so they don’t lose control of security in the event of a cyberattack.

Business Continuity Transformation – Why It’s Critical

Business continuity transformation means applying new techniques, technologies, and strategies to expand your enterprise’s ability to stay operational in a crisis.

More specifically, business continuity transformation means improving your current continuity plans. In this way, you can optimize your public-facing performance even if your company is currently backing up data, recovering from a cyberattack, or handling some other disaster.

The IT and cyber threat landscapes are constantly changing. It can be challenging for enterprises to always be innovating with their business continuity plans and procedures when they’re focused on so many other aspects of business operations.

What Is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

Disaster recovery plans emphasize restoring data access and security and ensuring the stability of IT infrastructure in the aftermath of a disaster.

In other words:

  • Business continuity prioritizes maintaining business operations throughout a disaster as well as possible to minimize consumer disruptions/security breaches
  • Disaster recovery means recovering data and restoring operational status after a disaster has concluded/security has been restored

Disaster recovery is also vital because many cyberattacks target vulnerable consumer data or valuable enterprise systems. Having a recovery plan in place may allow businesses to:

  • Secure their data more readily, minimizing the likelihood of a major or permanent breach
  • Restore business operations that consumers or employees rely on
  • Shore up security processes to prevent follow-up cyberattacks from being successful

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The Importance of Disaster Recovery Planning and Leadership | Long Island Tech Solutions Explains

Just like disaster or emergency plans for real-world crises, disaster recovery planning and leadership is also important for IT disasters. The best disaster recovery plans include:

  • Employee safety measures
  • Drills for cybersecurity or data protection
  • Purchasing supplies
  • Readying IT infrastructure
  • Coming up with response plans to fight back against malware and other cyberattacks
  • Methods to restore backed up data quickly
  • And more

However, even the best disaster recovery plans are only successful under the right leadership.

Organizations should ensure that at least one individual is placed in charge of disaster recovery planning and implementation. When a disaster strikes, that individual can quickly give orders and marshal security measures without unnecessary deliberation.

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Benefits of Managed Service Providers for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Managed service providers offer a wide range of benefits for companies just like yours. They can also provide specific advantages for business continuity planning and transformation, as well as disaster recovery procedures.

Business Continuity Testing | LI Tech Solutions

For example, managed service providers like LI Tech Solutions offer BCT or business continuity testing. This can provide your employees with key insights into their preparedness for potential disruption.

When you hire LI Tech, our cyber experts will help your team find good solutions for potential disasters, discover how to maintain services in the wake of a crisis, and much more. Plus, a managed service provider in Long Island, NY can help you run regular business continuity tests without interrupting your core business operations.

Perfect Implementation of Disaster Recovery Plans

Disaster recovery plans are only worthwhile if you can implement them properly. That’s easier said than done, especially if your employees are not properly trained on how to do so.

Managed service providers can implement your disaster recovery plans to the letter, ensuring that data is backed up properly, that IT infrastructure comes online in the right order, and that security is restored at the earliest opportunity.

End-to-End Encryption for Data Security

As experienced disaster recovery experts, LI Tech Solutions can provide end-to-end data security encryption. This flexible safeguard is perfect for any data environment, whether your business relies on cloud servers, hybrid servers, on-premises servers, or virtual servers.

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Fewer Manpower Requirements from Your Organization

Perhaps most important of all, managed service providers reduce the disaster recovery and business continuity planning manpower needed from your organization.

When you offload the burden of these procedures to a trusted managed service provider, your employees can instead focus on other elements of your business. You can prioritize delivering great experiences and products to your customers without having to worry so much about IT security.

Instead, your managed IT services provider can tackle the tough elements of disaster recovery and business continuity planning/transformation.

LI Tech Solutions | Best Data Protection Services in New York

No matter your business’s size or focus, LI Tech Solutions offers the best managed IT services in Long Island. Our data protection solutions, business continuity planning and testing, and other services allow us to provide your business with the support it needs to anticipate and overcome disasters in the future. Contact us today for more information!