Free guide

How to keep your business data safe

Understand what you hold, protect what matters most, and know how to recover when something goes wrong, in plain English, with worksheets you actually fill in.

Customer details, quotations, invoices, employee records and project files keep your business running. If they are exposed, changed or lost, the impact reaches customers, cash flow and reputation, not just IT.

Nine short chapters explain the principles. Then the owner's workbook walks you through eight activities with your own systems open in front of you: a data map, risk ranking, access review, safer sharing, a tested backup plan, suppliers and AI tools, and an incident card. A 30-day plan and a 20-minute monthly review keep it current.

What is inside

1. Understand what business data needs protection — Confidentiality, integrity, availability, and why all three matter
2. Know where your data lives — Building a data map, including the copies you forget
3. Collect less and classify information — Four sensitivity levels and how to use them
4. Control access to business data — Least access, and protecting the accounts that unlock others
5. Store and share files safely — Permissions, links, and the one-minute check before sending
6. Build backups you can restore — The 3–2–1 approach and proving it works
7. Protect devices, apps and accounts — Device basics, encryption and recovery keys
8. Manage employees, suppliers and AI tools — Data that leaves your team, and the rules that follow it
9. Respond to a data incident — Six first-response steps and what comes after
10. The owner's workbook — Eight activities, a 30-day plan and a monthly review

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