On July 29th, 2019, Capital One announced that there was a data security incident. This breach affected at least one million of its customers. While this breach was bad it pales in comparison to the Equifax breach of 2017 which saw hundreds of millions of individuals data leaked. Unfortunately, in 2019, this is not surprising news, as no company seems to be immune to data breaches. What further compounds this issue is that there are so many ways data can be leaked or stolen.

In this climate of almost constant data breaches, it has become a question of when rather than if a data breach is to happen. If one should happen it’s important to have an action plan in place to deal with the data breach. The first step is to assess the scope of the breach and make sure the breach is stopped and cannot be reopened. The second step would be to alert all critical internal parties to help with damage control. The last step is to inform all affected parties of the data breach as quickly as possible. Often how a breach is handled can have a good effect on the organization’s reputation or a bad one.

How to Prevent a Data Breach

While it’s impossible to eliminate all security risks and vulnerabilities, it is possible to drastically reduce the risks of a data breach. One area of information security that businesses may overlook is how they are handling their paper waste. This is especially important for organizations that use a lot of paper like medical and legal offices. When an organization has a lot of paper waste it’s imperative to have a shredding policy in place.

Another area of company waste that needs to be secured is hard drives in old computers. Unfortunately, some organizations don’t go to the lengths needed to ensure data is secured when decommissioning a PC. The best standard for this to shred the old hard drives to guarantee that the drive’s information cannot be retrieved by anyone.

If you need a shredding service, but don’t want to lose the data from your documents, a scanning service is a great idea. Scanning business documents secures your information and reduces the risks associated with storing physical documents around the office. Proshred® Dallas and Fort Worth offers affordable scanning services for all businesses in the area.

The saying one man’s trash is another man’s treasure is more relevant today than ever. If waste with sensitive information is not disposed of properly, it’s almost certain that sensitive information will fall into criminal hands. A simple solution to this issue is to have professionals securely handle and destroy all your documents, hard drives, and product shredding needs.

Proshred® of Dallas and Fort Worth is the go-to option in information destruction and will securely handle and destroy all your company’s confidential data whether stored on paper, hard drives, or products such as company uniforms. While it’s impossible to eliminate the risk of data breaches completely, it is possible to securely eliminate all your sensitive information with locally owned and trusted Proshred® Dallas and Fort Worth.

Frequently Asked Questions About Data Breaches

How can Data Breaches be Prevented?

While it’s impossible to eliminate data breaches completely, you can prevent a data breach by reducing the number of vulnerabilities that can be exploited, often through a paper shredding or hard drive destruction service.

How do Data Breaches Happen?

Most data breaches happen when an individual accesses confidential data through a company’s security. This is often completed by hackers, but nevertheless, using an information destruction company can assist in preventing a data breach.