It’s Time to Change your Thinking About Corporate Documents
July 10, 2017
Perception really is everything sometimes. On the stock market, millions of dollars are made and lost every day based on the perception of the health of a company, not its actual book value. A problem is a problem only if you perceive it to be so. But if you think of it as an opportunity, suddenly it’s no longer a problem.
Sometimes there’s no denying what something is. You can perceive a paper document to be anything you want it to be, but at the end of the day, it’s still a piece of paper.
Or is it? A document carries information and data. In that way, it’s a container. Oops! Wait a minute, did we just change our perception of a piece of paper there? Well, yes, we did. And it isn’t until you change your thinking about your corporate documents that you’ll get a full appreciation about keeping the information and data they contain secure, and dispose of them properly.
When you think of documents in terms of the data they contain, instead of the paper they are made of, you’ll spot a number of security issues in your business.
1. Blue Bins
Recycling is the duty of every responsible business. The recycling of paper and plastics that is. But you can’t ‘recycle’ data, so why do you put it in a blue bin where it could become public information and seriously harm your company and its reputation.
2. No Printing Policy
If your employees are free to print what they want, when they want, it puts them in the data publishing business. Except that’s your sensitive corporate data they’re cranking out every time they print a document just so they have their own copy.
3. Clutter
If you look around your office and see lots of pieces of paper, it’s messy. But, more importantly, each one is like an unlocked doorway to important company information.
Data security isn’t a perception.
Either you practice it or you don’t. But you should. If that means thinking about a piece of paper in terms of the information it carries, and handling it the way you’d handle private data, then you’ll be well on your way to increased data security.
