Technology

How Physical Security Can Help Prevent Data Risks

In the post-pandemic era, businesses prioritize cybersecurity to prevent data risks for their cloud-based platforms. However, physical security is just as important as cybersecurity when it comes to keeping your data private.

So, how does physical security help you to prevent data risks?

Keep reading as we explore the link between physical and cybersecurity for your data privacy, along with the best physical security practices that can help you to minimize data vulnerabilities.

Why Is Physical Security Important To Data Security?

Physical security is responsible for securing your premises from intruders, documenting any incidents that occur on-site, and providing alerts for potential emergencies. But, how does this relate to your data? To help you understand why physical security is a priority for data security, below are some of the physical security risks to your digital resources:

  • Third-party access – if someone manages to enter your premises without authorization, they will gain access to the valuable digital resources stored on-site, including your server rooms.
  • Internal security breaches – your employees could abuse their access permissions, using them to poach data and client information from your company.
  • Natural disasters – a natural disaster or fire on your premises could present a risk to data stored in on-premise servers.
  • Physical security data breaches – if your cloud-based physical security data is breached, a third party could access information regarding your security processes, and they could remotely operate your security system.

For the above reasons, it is crucial to consider physical security an essential aspect of your cybersecurity practices. Both security factions complement one another in the modern security climate.

Top Physical Security Practices To Protect Company Data

Now that you know why physical security is essential to your data protection, let’s discuss some of the best ways to mitigate the risk of data exposure using physical security measures.

Zero-Trust Physical Security

Zero trust is a policy typically applied in the context of cybersecurity. It ensures that every user on the network only gains access permissions for the data they need to use regularly, and nothing further. Implementing this policy protects your business in case of a data breach from an internal source, ensuring that only a limited amount of data is compromised – and not all of your data.

The same applies to your physical security for data privacy. If you allowed every building visitor, contractor, and low-level employee building-wide access control permissions, they would have access to your most valuable data and digital assets. Can you trust every user in your building? This is precisely why you must apply role-based permissions in physical security. 

Zero-trust physical security policies ensure visitors only gain access to communal areas and the areas they need for daily operations. Access to server rooms and critical digital resources is reserved for only high-level employees, IT teams, and security professionals. This way, you are not vulnerable to a data breach occurring inside the company.

Identity Verification

When applying access control security to your physical security strategy, you must consider the potential of someone using a stolen keycard to enter the premises and access your digital resources.

To prevent this from occurring, you must implement identity verification to protect areas containing valuable assets, resources, and data. You can integrate your cloud-based access control and video surveillance solutions to facilitate identity verification. Integrating these technologies means you can view access logs and video feed information alongside one another without correlating timestamps from different sources to verify identity.

To ensure air-tight security and verify every user’s identity, you must automate the identity verification process with facial recognition software. The software will ensure that a user’s facial profile matches the credentials they are using – ensuring that there are no incidents involving stolen access credentials.

Video Analytics

Your physical security team cannot use surveillance to spot and prevent incidents and security breaches on site. Instead, your security camera system serves only to document and evidence incidents on site. 

However, by integrating video analytics with your surveillance system, you can ensure that your security team is notified of any suspicious activity on the premises. The tool monitors your security data to find anomalies, detect dangerous objects, and spot loitering. 

Since your security staff cannot monitor your video feed 24/7, they will likely miss critical suspicious events that could help them to prevent an incident. With this technology, your security team will always be aware of security events, allowing them to take immediate action in response to security events.

By combining the ability to analyze video data with the scalability and flexibility of cloud-based systems like Middleware, organizations can gain real-time visibility into their video surveillance operations, helping them to make better informed decisions and respond quickly to any incidents that may occur.

Alarm Systems

To prevent damage caused to the digital resources stored in your building, you must implement efficient alarm systems. Spotting fires, smoke, and carbon monoxide early can help you to ensure your premises are safe, evacuate employees, and call authorities. 

The faster your response, the safer your employees and assets will be. To ensure you are aware of these incidents at all times, consider investing in cloud-based alarm systems that come with remote administration features. You can receive a mobile alert for any potential harmful incident on-site and act quickly from anywhere.

Summary

When it comes to physical security, you need to understand its impact on digital security. Prioritizing physical security will help you to ensure the data housed inside your property is not at risk. Consider the practices listed in this article and whether they can help you to strengthen your physical security for data protection.

Sweta Bose

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