In this day and age, with identity theft
and corporate spying running rampant, you can't be too careful about
protecting the sensitive information that every business deals with on
a daily basis. It is wise to protect yourself.Just as there are many ways in which you store, handle
and protect confidential information, there are also many ways to
safely destroy that information when the time comes to do so.
In this day and age, with identity theft
and corporate spying running rampant, you can't be too careful about
protecting the sensitive information that every business deals with on
a daily basis. It is wise to protect yourself. It is now the law that
every business must properly destroy any potentially sensitive
information about its clients, employees, or customers before
discarding it. Just as there are many ways in which you store, handle
and protect confidential information, there are also many ways to
safely destroy that information when the time comes to do so.
Lock It Up: There is no telling where and when your
sensitive information will be compromised. You may, in fact, be giving
prying eyes an opportunity every time you step away from your desk for
a few minutes. Thus, it is highly recommended that you find secure,
physical protection for such things as confidential documents, CDs,
floppy discs, zip drives and tapes, password cheat sheets, and file
cabinet keys. For portable computers which contain sensitive info, you
should purchase and use laptop locks. Another necessity is to make sure
that you keep all office doors and filing cabinets locked when they are
not in use, and at the end of each day.
Shred It:
Obviously the most secure of all the solutions, the best way to
eliminate unnecessary risk is to shred daily, on site, and by hand, any
items that you no longer need, that might be dangerous or compromising
in the wrong hands. Also you should make sure that you clean the areas
around all printers and fax machines at the end of every day (or even
every few hours) and shred any confidential info that may have been
left behind by careless employees or co-workers. Because of the added
security, having your own on site shredders is much preferable to
giving your sensitive documents over to a shredding service.
Password Protect It:
One easy and wise thing to do is to set up your computer to implement a
password protected screen saver after fifteen minutes or less of non
use. Also, it should go without saying that you should never share your
passwords with anyone, or even store them anywhere on the computer. If
you can't avoid that, disguise them in a file that doesn't use the word
"passwords" in the file or file name.
Clean It: As
in that laptop that you are passing on to a new employee, selling, or
even throwing away. Before doing any of the above, make sure that you
have properly wiped and reclaimed all of your information. If you are
throwing a computer away, take pains to securely destroy it, and its
hard disk or flash drive. Remember that simply deleting files may not
be sufficient. If you really want to wipe your hard drive you will need
to use a special utility to overwrite the sectors on the hard drive so
that the data can be undeleted.
Of course, these security measure need to be adopted company-wide to be
effective. It might be a good idea to have a meeting with all of your
employees in which you go over these basic security measures. Later,
you could even conduct an audit so you can ensure that your office is
as secure as is possible.
If you are looking for a good quality paper shredder for your office, you might want to check out MyBinding.com. They carry the full line of GBC Shredmaster Shredders
as well as shredders from Fellowes, Martin Yale, Intimus, MBM
DestroyIt, Dahle and HSM of America. Choose from a huge selection of
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