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Protect Your Data and Your Business
October 26, 2007
Are you using these top five strategies to protect your data?
By Tim Rhodes
We lock our businesses, homes and cars to restrict wrongful entry and burglary. We invest heavily in security systems to deter and prevent loss. But how can we similarly protect intellectual property?
Data loss occurs every day through various channels including current and former employees, competitors and on-site contractors. A recent Trends in Proprietary Information Loss, survey sponsored by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, revealed that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the ASIS Foundation found that both Fortune 1,000 and small- to mid-sized businesses, were likely to experience proprietary information and intellectual property losses ranging from $53 and $59 billion. These losses involved: R&D (49 percent); customer lists and related data (36 percent) and financial data (27 percent).
While there's no way to stop the sharing of information in business, there are measures you can take to minimize your risk.
1. Inventory and Risk Assessment
Conduct a comprehensive inventory of your business information. Catalog electronic data and identify type and purpose. Once cataloged, rate the risk of each based on its importance to the organization's ongoing operations.
For example:
• Is the information essential to mission-critical business functions (such as payroll, banking or legal documentation),
• Is the information required for business continuity but not detrimental should systems falter for a brief period of time (such as e-mail), or deferrable should systems falter for an extended period of time (such as past employee or past customer archives)?
• Is the data sensitive or unrestricted?
Once a comprehensive inventory is in place along with risk-ratings for each category, management can quickly record and assess risk at file creation.
2. New Policies
Implement new policies defining procedures for security breach, system failure or threat. This should include remediation and reporting strategies. All businesses should also have a confidentiality policy signed by all employees that outlines employee responsibility, information use and disclosure practices.
3. Control and Authorization
When dealing with sensitive information, have processes in place restricting physical and/or electronic access. This might include keyed or coded entry for paper files or password restriction, firewalls and program encryption for electronic files. Organizations should also require employees to use shredders when destroying confidential documents.
4. Ongoing Communication
Sharing information is a natural instinct among social groups and communities. This means, you should continually communicate with your employees, sub-contractors and consultants. You want to ensure all parties understand what information is confidential and what their responsibilities are in safeguarding its integrity.
5.The Accountability Trail
With employees aware of their responsibilities, businesses should hold them accountable for confidentiality leaks and breaches caused by their actions. This means consistent disciplinary action for all individuals violating company policy.
Just as physical security is critical to protecting assets and inventory, businesses must make information security a high priority. Information security should include inventory, valuation, access controls, consistent communication and clear accountability trails. When organizations implement a comprehensive program using each of these five strategies, they're well on their way toward maximum data protection.
Data protection expert Tim Rhodes has helped hundreds of companies just like yours protect their most valuable asset online. Take Tim's Free Risk Assessment Quiz at www.webargos.com/quiz and see if your company is at risk.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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