Securing information that must not be disclosed is one of the main goals of any business participant. Whether it is the head of the company or a small employee, everyone should be cautious of confidentiality to avoid any risks.
According to a study conducted in 2008, 25% of all businesses lose on average almost $40,000 due to the leaks of confidential information. To avoid such serious predicaments, one should always use various protection measures, starting from the small habits implemented among employees and ending with legal forms that secure non-disclosure of confidential data.
Ways of Protecting Confidential Business Information
There are various methods that can help your business protect the confidentiality of information. These simple suggestions are not only aimed at avoiding major risks. They also help to establish a safe environment within the company and build a reputation for a business that can be trusted.
1. Create a Secure Physical Documents Storage
If your business has any documentation printed on paper, make sure to create storage that is highly protected. Such secure space presupposes a good lock or alarm system and limited access of both employees and people external to the company. The information should be accessed only by those who need it for work purposes.
2. Make Non-Disclosure Agreements and Clauses
To protect sensitive information from leaking, it is better to have signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) from people you work with or have clauses about disseminating confidential information in the labor contract.
Such measures will clarify to others that you are serious about securing business data. To make a proper NDA, you can use online tools provided by the websites like formspal.com. You will be able to find the needed template and fill it in by following the detailed instructions.
3. Create an Inventory
Storing information properly is not enough; you should also have records of where everything is stored and who has access to it. If your data is kept on different types of media, it will be hard to check on it constantly and, therefore, easy to get into the wrong hands.
To avoid such problems, make an inventory which would allow you to follow all the important information on where and how the documents are stored.
4. Teach Employees to Use Security Measures
It is always good to know that you can trust your workers with confidential data. To be sure of them, you should let them know about the security measures implemented in your company.
If you want your employees to have proper information security habits, you should teach them how to:
- Protect any sensitive information regardless of the method of storage or validity.
- Get rid of papers that are out of date by shredding them.
- Safely store the information when it is not in use.
- Disclose confidential data only to those who are allowed to know.
- Notify about the questionable cases of unauthorized access.
5. Provide Good Security for Data Stored Digitally
In our times of modern technologies, hackers acquire advanced techniques for stealing important information from any electronic carrier. To keep your business out of such dangerous situations, it is better to provide a good level of cybersecurity.
Do not try to save money on purchasing the best security software because this decision affects how good the storage of your virtual data will be. It is better to spend a lot and be sure that you have minimized all the risks, rather than become bankrupt because of confidential information leaks.
6. Create Reserve Backups
If you store most information on paper, it is better to have the copies in digital format and vice versa. Having some backups can save your business in plenty of emergencies. Even if some important data gets lost or stolen, you would still have access to it, enabling the company to minimize the consequences of loss.
7. Have Strict Rules for Visitors
Keeping out those who are not allowed to access the confidential information from the place where it is stored is a good solution. However, we would also advise keeping track of every person who is not an employee that comes in and goes out of the office or storage space. This would allow you to easily check who might have contacted the documents in case of any trouble.
8. Keep Office Desks Clean
All executives and employees should follow the practice of not leaving on the desks any information that might be confidential without supervision. If anyone can view the data even unintentionally, the risks of disclosure increase majorly.
That is why the rule of clean desks should be implemented. When the digital files are closed and paper documents are locked up, there are very few chances of the information being seen by workers without access, cleaners, or even strangers.
9. Limit the Access Each Worker Has
This security measure includes limiting the number of employees who have access to one or another piece of data and restricting the amount of data each employee is allowed to access. If one worker has a lot of confidential information on their hands, it becomes too much of a responsibility. That is why it is better to distribute work tasks between several people so that they have access to only one particular part of the data.
10. Check the Accounts of Your Employees
Each working account that your employees have might be under the threat of hacking and, therefore, the information being stolen. To reduce the chances of this, the system of alarming, which would indicate unusual log-ins, should be used on all company accounts.
Moreover, it is good to track all the actions of those business accounts. Such information might be helpful later in case of hacking or illegal access, as it would be easier to trace all the actions that led to the trouble.
