More than 300 million business records have already leaked onto the dark web in 2025. Organizations of every size in every industry have been affected, and the threat is only growing. Data protection is a cost-effective and reliable solution, but it needs a tailored approach to be implemented effectively.

Here’s what your organization needs to know to best protect your data.

What is data protection?

Every organization is vulnerable to data breaches and cyberattacks. Data protection describes the approach your organization takes to protect the data stored on your cloud platforms and devices.

There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy, and there are many suitable tools and approaches available. Instead of focusing on specific actions to take, first consider the following key areas:

  • Access controls: Who can access data within your company and from which devices? How will your organization identify them, confirm their access level, and authorize access accordingly?
  • Compliance with external regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA: Is your organization’s data stored accordingly with regulations you’re legally required to follow? Is sensitive customer data processed and stored adequately?
  • Backup and disaster recovery: In the event of an emergency, are backups of your key systems and data in place? How easily can your organization segment its networks, revoke access, and identify unauthorized access?
  • Incident response: Has your organization created a thorough incident response plan for how it will prepare for and respond to a cybersecurity incident?

Each of these aspects of your strategy dictates how well your organization can respond to a data breach, a ransomware attack, or exfiltration. By covering each of these areas, you can ensure your plan accounts for all stages of the data life cycle, from collecting to storage to processing.

How to put data protection best practices in place

Now that you have a clear framework to use, you can begin to flesh out a data protection strategy that meets your organization’s specific needs.

Catalogue and classify your data

It’s hard to protect your data if you don’t understand where it’s stored or how it’s classified. Once you’ve identified where everything is stored in your business network, including apps, drives, cloud storage, and devices, data can be categorized into these buckets:

  • Type
  • Value
  • Risk exposure
  • Regulatory requirements (if applicable)

Once you can understand your data in terms of how valuable it is and what level of governance it requires, it’s easier to build a framework that prioritizes protecting your most sensitive and valuable data.

Robust cataloguing and classification make remaining compliant with data regulations much easier, reducing the risk of any costly breaches. Proper classification also improves reporting, helping your organization extract more value from your data and perform better analysis. This step is vital for spotting potential risks, deciding what protection measures you’ll put in place, and keeping your data organized.

Choose secure tools

The right data protection tools make access management, authentication, and authorization simple for every team member, as well as securing your business data. End-to-end encryption is an essential feature for any tool, because it ensures no one can access your business data but you.

  • Password manager: A secure password manager is the ideal repository for business passwords, credit cards, notes, and files. This sensitive data is valuable to hackers and prone to appearing on the dark web following successful data breaches and phishing attacks. Admins will be able to monitor all logins to your business network for an easy overview, granting and revoking access where necessary to help your business implement zero trust principles for your data. Admins can also be automatically notified if any of your data appears on the dark web.
  • VPN: Your organization can configure private gateways and implement network segmentation using a secure VPN. Working remotely or from a personal device can blur the lines between personal and private data, so using a VPN instead creates a secure working environment where access is only granted to authorized individuals and devices. When you’re working with sensitive data or region-restricted services, this is very valuable.
  • Cloud storage: Every business needs a secure drive to protect its IP, its customer data, and its financial data. Sensitive data such as names, addresses, and health information require stringent protection, so relying on an end-to-end encrypted drive as a repository protects your business. Collaborating and sharing documents is an essential feature for any drive service.

If you’re looking for a secure suite of business tools, you can start a 14 day trial of Proton Business Suite, which offers business mail, drive, VPN, password management, calendar, and docs.

Make sure once you’re using your tools that you perform regular data and device backups. These can make all the difference if you lose access to key systems, and potentially mitigate the damage done by a data breach.

Implement secure access control

Access control ensures that only authorized individuals can access business apps, services, devices, and data. Authentication and authorization play large parts in access control policies because they verify who an employee is and what they need access to. To prevent unauthorized people from gaining access to your business network, you’ll need to go beyond just passwords.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) requires both a password and a secondary piece of information to log in. This could be a physical security key, a fingerprint, or a code generated by a secure authenticator app. This additional factor makes it much harder for a would-be intruder to access your network, since the factor is something unique to or in close physical proximity to the authorized user.

Permissions should also be granted on a need-to-know basis. Instead of giving every team member access to every app and service, your IT admins must grant access only to assets each worker requires in their team and role. This is known as the principle of least knowledge. This approach secures your data thoroughly by ensuring that no one can access data that they don’t require access to.

Create an incident response plan

It’s better to prepare for a breach that doesn’t happen than fail to prepare for one that does happen. Your incident response plan will help your organization to plan for, minimize the effects of, and quickly recover from a theoretical breach. In the event that one does happen, you’ll be prepared.

Your incident response plan should consider how your organization will respond before, during, and after a cyber incident. It’s a very important tool for protecting your data as it lays out who’s responsible for enforcing your best practices, who is monitoring for potential events, and who will act in the event that an incident needs to be contained.