A growing number of companies are implementing rules that assure greater compliance with government requirements and safe storage of critical company data. Loss of business data may not only result in penalties but also cause loss of reputation, customer trust, & finances.

Following are the most common methods used by businesses to protect corporate communications from cyberattacks:

• PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data usage and security: A company's corporate data usage policy should explicitly define what constitutes acceptable use of the data. The PII data policies must evidently state whether corporate and/or personal use is permitted, and if yes, then what will be the scope of it. If employees are granted personal use, steps should be taken to outline what types of correspondence will be considered unacceptable or offensive.

• Installing DLP (Data Loss Prevention) tools to prevent unauthorized transmission of company secrets: Up to 90% of a company's intellectual capital now exists in digital form. It has been estimated that the loss of critical business information via cybersecurity incidents to more than USD 24 Billion per year. It's vital that every employee understands the critical seriousness of transmitting company data. Hence, a deploying DLP solution is beneficial to not just detecting but also preventing the loss of critical and sensitive data via business communications.

• Complying with business-specific standards and government regulations: The HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act regulate data privacy. The acts detail specific measures that regulated companies must take to adequately protect customer data. The Securities and Exchange Commission requires organizations to comply with certain privacy and auditing standards, security controls, and mechanisms.

• Monitoring employees’ behaviors and usage of internet and corporate devices: The company is eventually responsible for any employee’s misuse of corporate devices, assets, and data. Hence it is required to responsibly monitor, review and inspect its employees' communications. The allowed use and acceptable behavior should be articulated in a company’s communications policy, and each employee should be required to sign an agreement for the same.

• Creating a Cybersecurity program and install security tools to strengthen the security posture: Integrations with applications that can scan messages and attachments are essential. Installation of SOC (Security Operations Center) along with the requisite software solutions is of utmost importance to strengthen the security posture of the organization.

• Categorizing different types of information and their scope of usage: Filters should be established to look for potentially offensive or defamatory business correspondence. All outbound data transmission should be scanned for project names and other keywords that might indicate that confidential content may be about to leave the organization. Alerts that are flagged by the content filtering tools should be blocked outright or stripped off their attachments.

• Implementing PoLP (Principle of Least Privilege): Within the company, a completely secure-communications strategy should establish graduated degrees of privilege for users. IT administrators should leverage this categorization to apply contextual logic to groups of content. For example, different types of sensitive corporate content should demand different levels of clearance to be approved for data and information distribution.

• Deploying an appropriate encryption scheme to protect corporate email data: To safeguard every digital material that is approved for transmission beyond a specific sensitivity threshold, strict criteria should be implemented. Unless linked via a VPN, personnel data related to HR, blueprints, contract agreements, business strategies, and other sensitive information should not be transmitted between individuals in remote locations.

• Implementing using VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) to facilitate remote working: VPN Policies can be used to establish trusted communication channels between distributed sets of users that eliminate the threat of eavesdropping. Based on the identity of the sender and recipient, policy rules can be created to secure all communications between particular individuals or specific groups of users.

• Privacy and Security of data-in-transit and data-at-rest: Data policy rules can be set to secure the data stored in servers at the backend as well as the data getting transmitted and exchanged between senders and recipients. Encrypting all communications between certain persons of importance (for example, the CEO and CFO) or groups of users (remote finance departments, legal division and outside law firm, executive management, and R&D, etc.) is of utmost importance.

Securing corporate communications should start with the company's formation. Physical controls must be in place before new gadgets & infrastructure may be incubated. To safeguard company communications, qualified security staff must be employed and trained. 

Centex Technologies provides advanced cybersecurity solutions to businesses. To know more about securing business communications, contact Centex Technologies at Killeen (254) 213 - 4740, Dallas (972) 375 - 9654, Atlanta (404) 994 - 5074, and Austin (512) 956 – 5454.