Every business has its confidential data that must be protected at any cost. This sensitive information could be sales records, surveys and research from rival companies, legal and financial documents, details of employees and customers, including their name, contact number, address, account numbers and credit card details, to name just a few.
So, as a business professional, it’s your responsibility to keep this essential information safe and protected. And if you are a part of a big organisation, then the information could be in bulk. So, in order for you to ensure that the information doesn’t land in the wrong hands, you need to have a solid strategy.
In this article, we have shared some crucial tips that will help you perform your job more effectively.
Know the privacy laws
A business contains sensitive information of its customers like their account number, credit card information and identity. Customers provide their details to the company by trusting their accountability; so as per laws, businesses are responsible to keep this vital information safe and protected, and avoid any sort of misuse.
So, before you collect details from your patrons, read all the latest rules and policies of the government. Also, make sure that your information system is strong enough to store and protect such important data.
Protecting information on papers
If you are making use of a manual system to store everyone’s details, then you need to be extra careful to safeguard the records of the company. As papers have higher chances of getting damaged physically, make sure all the files are stored in a waterproof and quality tote box, and then kept in locked drawers or cabinets.
Bear in mind, these drawers or cabinets must be out of the general public’s reach and must be locked.
Also, make sure that only some senior or authorised officers have access to these papers.
At times, you might need to provide some important information to your staff for the company’s internal work. In this case, make sure that you have trained your staff to lock all the important sections before leaving the office to save them from being misused or damaged.
Protecting digital information
As more and more companies are being digitised, the cases of online hacking has been increasing at the same pace. Now, it’s easy for hackers to steal sensitive information of any organization by hacking their website. Well, it goes without saying that when a company’s website is breached, all its sensitive information gets stolen including the account number and credit card information.
So, make sure you are using a strong encrypted system to protect all your digital documents and online portal. Trust us, paying for an encrypted system is worth the investment, as it saves your business as well as the relationship you have with your customers.
And if you are giving access of such sensitive information to your employees to make a presentation or to work from home, then make sure you are keeping a record of such employees and the information given to them.
Disposing documents properly
After a certain time, a business needs to dispose off its old information that is no longer useful. Just because you are disposing the outdated information, it doesn’t mean that it is not sensitive anymore. This information may have all the details of your old customers, clients, partners and old financial records; so it’s your duty to dispose them all safely.
For doing just that, make sure that all the outdated data are destroyed carefully and are not leaked to any third person. For example, if you are destroying paper documents, shred them so that they can’t be pieced back together. And if you are destroying digital information, delete it permanently from all online portals and then from computer drives as well. If the information is too sensitive or stored in a permanent storage, then it is better to destroy the drive physically so that no one can use it.
Have a strong database management system
As all the information is stored in the company’s database, its necessary to make sure that the database is safe and secured. For that, make sure that you have applied enough security measures on the sensitive information and have given its access only to people who’re authorised to use it.
There we have it – our 5 sure-fire ways to ensure that all your essential business documents are safe and any sort of damage or misuse is kept at bay!