Is Your Business Data Protected?

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It's Data Privacy Awareness Day!

Are you—and your business's data—protected?

Today, January 28th, is this year's Data Privacy Awareness Day, and it couldn't be more relevant to our business than it is this year. At Full Blast Creative, we take pride in always taking security seriously for both our own systems and for our clients' digital assets. However, in any business cracks start to creep in over time, a combination of aged technology, complacency, new threats, and just plain bad luck. With the added factor of an increasingly digital workforce now logging in to work remotely from different connections (including home WiFi, coffee shops, and AirBnBs), the new way of working in this pandemic creates even more opportunity for security issues to arise. 

In today's technological world, data privacy and security is extremely important. Since the first Data Privacy Awareness Day back in 2007, online privacy threats have greatly increased to the point that we can no longer take a passive stance on the issue. In both our daily and work lives, we must actively do what we can to protect our personal and professional digital security. With the start of the new year, what better time to review your own data-handling practices around your personal and business security? 

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A Cautionary Tale

In early January 2022, the Full Blast Creative NAS (Network Access Storage) device was targeted with a ransomware attack; however, it was quickly spotted by our team due to the security infrastructure we had in place. This attack prompted our team to immediately pull the plug on the server, which minimized any impact and limited our files from suffering the fated .7z these hackers would have encrypted our files with.

Because digital security is critical to the work we do, we had ensured that we had redundant backups prior to the attack and motivated the team to audit and address our hardware setup, office procedures, and our approach to cybersecurity in 2022. 

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Apart from this attack, we're sure that 2022 will see even more attempts as new threats emerge. In our case, we identified that some of our technology was outdated and could likely benefit from updated security profiles on the device. Since then, we've replaced our older system with a new, speedy NAS device that provides us with plenty of room for digital growth and includes the latest in security measures. This, combined with an updated routine for checking files and reviewing data, has us feeling more confident for the year ahead as we add more trilobites of data to the Full Blast Creative file system for all our current and future clients. 

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Protecting Yourself and Your Data

The FBI announced at the beginning of the pandemic that an increase in remote work would leave virtual environments more vulnerable to cyber attacks and extortion. McAfee echoed this concern in an analysis done by the company last year, estimating an 80% increase from 2018 in cybercrime-related monetary losses. 


How Can You Enhance Your Data Privacy?

  • Do you have regular backups to offsite locations?
  • Is 2-factor authentication enabled on your social profiles?
  • Do you have proper secured storage of all my account passwords?

The answers to these questions will help determine where your digital security could improve.

Another step you can take to enhance your data security and privacy is to set up a hardware monitoring system with notifications enabled for when a threat is detected. Hardware monitoring systems are also able to give you timely information, reports, and warnings in a reader-friendly manner. For more tips and tools to protect your data privacy, visit this Synology article for more information on the topic. 

Full Blast Creative always ensures any web project, social campaign, and shared project links are secured with the best practices possible, leveraging the best-in-class third party tools, and in some cases, we advise and consult with clients on the best approaches for their digital security needs. We also work with great local companies liked Kubed Solutions and Webcore Labs who provide additional services that go beyond our core marketing and creative offerings.

In 2022, enhancing our data security should be at the top of our to-do list. If you'd like to audit and test your systems, reach out to us and we will connect you with our partners at Kubed or Webcore. Let's allow this year's Data Privacy Awareness Day to be a reminder that we all need to be mindful of our online privacy and security needs in 2022! 

About the Author

FBC

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About Us
Full Blast Creative is an award-winning, full service, Calgary marketing agency. We help brands excel in marketing and sales through web development, e-commerce solutions, social media management, SEO & SEM, email marketing, print design, and photo & video production.

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