Data security is becoming increasingly more important with the introduction of GDPR in the last few years and the rise of data breaches in major corporations. Even after several years of these laws coming into effect, there are still companies which are non-compliant or who have weaknesses in their online security. But with data being such a valuable asset, excellent protection services for both your own company’s files and your clients are essential to ensure sensitive data is protected from any potential attacks.

Security is our greatest priority at Clinked and it is woven into the design of our client portal software. And while our dedicated team of developers are constantly working on improving your safe cloud experience, we’ve also compiled some useful tips that you and your clients can implement to ensure even greater levels of security protect your work. 

There are also steps individuals can take to reduce their personal account risks, such as maintaining strong passwords for different systems and platforms, storing passwords in a secure system, and investing in antivirus software. Below are our top tips on what organisations can do to keep client data secure.

Best business practices for ensuring client data is secure

Assume that your business will be attacked

A common mistake usually made by smaller businesses is presuming that they won’t be targeted due to their size. However cyber attacks are often targeted at small businesses due to the likelihood of having weaker security systems. It’s always best to be cautious when it comes to your cyber security practices and prepare yourself and your business with the means to protect itself. This could include having internal policies and procedures on how to carry out investigations of reported breaches, as well as an emergency response plan in case an attack hits.

Prepare Your Staff

As well as having the procedures in place to respond to an attack, your employees should be trained and regularly refreshed on the dangers and threats of the different types of attacks and how to identify them through phishing emails and other similar scams. Regular run throughs of common scam tactics will familiarise your staff with what to look for and when to proceed with caution. You should also be keeping a track of repeated hacking attempts to refer back to keep yourself ahead of any attackers.

It's beneficial to have variety in your methods of data tracking for enhanced security. For instance, you could start web scraping in C#. Web scraping in this highly efficient language allows you to extract vast amounts of data from numerous websites. By analysing this data, unusual patterns can be identified that might signal a cyber attack or hacking attempt before it has the chance to reach your system, thus strengthening your security mechanisms."

Host Your Servers Privately

A private cloud gives you a dedicated space to host your work online and can be geared towards exactly what you need, including specific security features. Using a private cloud  makes it a lot more difficult for any outside users to access your information, as compared to a public cloud option. It also allows you to keep track of exactly who has access to the information stored on your servers, either on-premise or in the cloud.

Comply with Data Security Standards

Maintaining compliance with internationally recognized data security standards is critical. It indicates your dedication to protecting sensitive information from potential breaches and inspires trust in clients.

A significant step towards this is securing an ISO 27001 certification. This globally accepted standard supports the implementation of an effective management system for information security (ISMS).

With such a certification, you can provide substantial evidence of robust data protections which will boost client confidence while delivering legal protection by complying with necessary regulations. There are other specific standards to keep in mind, such as the PCI DSS for payment card transactions, so don’t settle for meeting just one set of requirements.

Regularly test your security levels

Above all it’s essential that you are carrying out regular tests on all of the measures put in place to check for any vulnerabilities. Breaches are likely to happen when your security systems are predictable and rigid, as attackers will know what to expect. You can keep on top of your security by installing software that will run daily virus and malware scans on your device. It's also a good idea to contract external cyber security experts to examine your setup to equip your systems with the best possible protection. 

Despite adopting good individual security practices, this is greatly outweighed by having a portal software which has its own excellent security features. Clinked’s client portal software has incredibly strong levels of security as standard, so here’s our best features to ensure your client’s data security.

Back up mission-critical data comprehensively

Even with the most powerful security systems in place, it's crucial to understand that data loss can still occur. This could be due to unexpected system failures or even human error, including the accidental deletion of important files. For such inevitabilities, backing up your sensitive business and client data is paramount.

As part of this, don't just stop at one backup. The need for redundant backups is apparent if you consider the extent of the threats you face. Essentially redundancy means having extra copies of data stashed away in different storage mediums like local servers, cloud storage spaces, or even external hard drives. In case a cyber attack occurs or some sort of failure wipes out one layer of backups, you still have more layers as safety nets.

Additionally, ensuring robust physical security measures, such as access control to data centers and security surveillance systems, is crucial to safeguarding against unauthorized physical access or tampering, further enhancing the reliability of data redundancy strategies.

How Clinked client portal software ensures data security

High level encryption 

Clinked is protected with bank grade end-to-end encryption - with 256 bit SSL in transit and AES encryption at rest - to give you the highest level of security for your files.

Clinked is also GDPR compliant and this has been thought about and adopted throughout our security features, such as our feature to enforce the use of complex passwords by requiring your members to create passwords with a combination of letters, numbers and special characters, as well as the support of two factor authentication.

Trackable access

Secure access to data in Clinked starts from the first login that you have on our portal and is present throughout the platform. You can begin setting the levels of security you want in the access you chose to give your users. Our differing levels of permissions for our members can be determined by Super Admins and dictates who can see what types of items in the portal and whether they can upload, download or comment on them.

You can also monitor how your own members are using the portal should you suspect any suspicious activity around sensitive items with our audit trail feature. Here you can see exactly which members have viewed and interacted with which content, at what time and even their IP address they used to access it. This provides an excellent way to protect your business even from internal threats. 

For those that require an extra level of security, we also offer a private cloud option. Our private cloud solutions are available to Enterprise clients who want an extra level of security and improved performance compared to the standard public cloud platform. Using Clinked via a dedicated private cloud would be the equivalent of having Clinked installed on your on-premise servers.

A client portal software solution is a reliable way of ensuring client data is kept in a safe, secure environment. You can discuss the possibilities with our team by booking a demo.