Document Security Management
Don't Let Unauthorized Persons Access Your Documents
You won't want your business strategy document to fall into the hands of a competitor. Or an identity thief to get full details of your bank account. These and other kinds of dangers are quite possible unless you have a good system of data security management in place.
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Let us start by looking at some possible sources of unauthorized document access
- Competitors seeking competitive information about your business
- Disgruntled employees seeking to damage your business in some way
- Thieves seeking bank account or credit card identity details
- Hackers seeking to show off their password and other security cracking skills
- Peeping Toms who just want to pry into other people's affairs
- And that good (or rather bad) old virus seeking to damage your data just for the heck of it
Thus the threat to your data can come from very different directions.
Unauthorized access to your business data can also land you in trouble with the law. There are privacy regulations that require you to keep certain information confidential. Examples include employee health data and other privileged communications from different sources. If outsiders are able to access such confidential data, and publicize it, you could be in serious trouble.
How Do Outsiders Gain Access to Your Data?
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Unauthorized persons can gain access to your data in a number of ways. These include:
- Spies Inside: Competitors bribe your employees to act as their spies and steal your business secrets.
- Software Spies: There is a class of software known as spyware. These programs enter your computer unnoticed and reside there to collect and transmit sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers, etc.
- Hacking: Hackers are experts at gaining access to remote computers and the data on them. Hackers might not steal your data; but might destroy it resulting in damage to your business.
- Virus: Whereas viruses reached your computer through media such as removable disks in olden days, these days it could come from the sky (the Internet connection).
So how do you guard against these kinds of dangers?
Document Security Systems
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We look at what you can do to ensure security of your documents and data:
- Organizational: You must plan and implement strong access procedures backed by appropriate storage facilities. The policies must specify who can access what documents and data, and what they can do with it. Authentication and other procedures must keep a track of movement of all sensitive documents.
- Software Based: There are software for detecting and removing spyware and viruses, and firewall programs for restricting outsider's access to your computer. You should use these in consultation with experts (firewalls can sometimes block access of even genuine programs).
- Backup Procedures: Data should be regularly backed up. The backups must be checked to ensure that they are recoverable if the need arises. You would then be able to reconstruct the data if it is lost.
- System Reviews: It would be a good idea to have your security systems reviewed by an independent consultant once in a year or so. Changing environment could make existing procedures inadequate.
- Secure Data Transmission: Data can be hacked even during transmittal over the Internet. You should consider security procedures like encrypting sensitive data before it is transmitted.
You could be reasonably secure by adopting the above measures, which would be adequate in most situations.
Conclusion
Document and data security is extremely important in a business environment. Unless proper procedures have been implemented, unauthorized persons could access your sensitive data and steal your business secrets. You can adopt a number of security practices to safeguard your business from intruders.
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