Cannabis businesses share the modern environment of extremely high data security risk.
The cannabis industry occupies a unique spot when it comes to user data security. Depending on your place in the supply chain, the secure data handled by your cannabis business can include employee personal and financial information, private and patented strain information, secure business operations, client’s personal and payment information, and even medical information that could be covered under HIPAA.
In addition to strict regulation, cannabis businesses share the modern environment of extremely high cybersecurity risk. Targeted hacks and malware infected assets are around every corner. Most businesses, prepare for a data breach with the assumption that the first or next will eventually come. Today, we’re taking a closer look at the best data security precautions a cannabis business can take to provide responsible stewardship of data.
Define & Defend Your Secure Data
- Any login information
- Any medical information
- Client personal or payment information
- Employee personal and financial information
- Proprietary business data and reports
- Information related to security access
First, know what data you are defending. While a universal approach of defense is useful, focusing your efforts on the most sensitive, regulation-protected, or potentially harmful data can hone your data security measures and results.
Store Encrypted Data & Use End-to-End Encryption
Encryption is your ultimate protection against a successful data breach. If a hacker steals encrypted files, their haul will be useless. Encrypted data renders unreadable garble for any computer that doesn’t have the randomly generated key. Make sure to encrypt all sensitive data in storage so that, if unobserved, it will be in a highly difficult-to-steal state. You can also encrypt your end-to-end solutions, ensuring that data remains encrypted when transferring over the cloud and external network routes.
Remotely Store Regular Backups
The next solution is to make sure you regularly take backups of critical data or operational snapshots and store them on the cloud. Malware and hacker attacks often target your local business network or a hosted server. If you can kill switch and factory reset any computer or server in your domain then quickly restore from a backup, you can eliminate many of the biggest concerns of the corporate hacking risk.
Secure a Cyber Insurance Policy
Lastly, secure a cyber insurance policy. Insurance on cyber security promises to cover the costs, sometimes enormous costs, of a data security breach. Cyber insurance may cover fines and fees, lawsuits, and for the identity monitoring service offered to those affected to ensure they are safe from identity theft for several years after a breach occurs. Cyber insurance may also cover costs to rebuild tech infrastructure to strengthen against the latest threats. Cyber insurance today is already keeping companies in business when hacks would have drained their resources in regulation fines after a breach. With hacking so prevalent, it’s important to have a plan for how to deal with a new inevitability in the business world.
Data Security in the Cannabis Industry
The cannabis industry touches on medical data, lab data, botany patents, device patents, and the simple yet vital personal data of each person employed or involved in the industry. There is a great deal of data worthy of dedicated and well-built security efforts. Fortunately, the tools are now readily available for any cannabis business to build a secure IT infrastructure, achieve end-to-end encryption, and handle operations in a secure way to minimize the risk.
Once risk is minimized, cyber insurance will take care of any costs that might occur despite the IT defenses best efforts. One of the best ways to ensure end-to-end security for your cannabis business data is to work with secure software and cloud service providers. Contact us today for more cannabis news and business insights.
Final Thoughts
At MaxQ Technologies, Inc., we believe the cannabis industry needs a system that can protect cannabis companies’ data and mitigate the risk of a cyber-attack. Our Seed to Sale ERP system is specifically designed for this industry and will provide greater security and protection against bad actors trying to hack into corporate systems. Contact us today or visit our website for more information on how our ERP systems can help your business.
