Top Ways A Business Can Be Exposed To Data Breach Incidents
January 24, 2015
According to research, data breach incidents can turn out to be very costly, costing your company possibly millions of dollars today. Despite this huge financial risk, many companies still continue to be too complacent and loose about protecting their confidential and important information. Many times, until they face a mishap, it does not seem too pressing for companies to act on protecting such crucial information.
There are certain ways a business or a company can easily fall into the trap of data breach and in this article we will be taking you through these possibilities. As a start, even if companies do not implement measures to protect their confidential information, they should be aware of these ways in which they can be disadvantaged so that they can be extra cautious.
Improper disposal of important documents
Employees when they are not trained properly and counselled adequately, will still go on to take the easy way out in their daily work lives, to throw away important documents into the trash bin without blocking out the confidential information. Shredding before dumping it in the trash can is an easy way to prevent problems out of disposing important documents into bins, but often in the offices the shredder is chucked in a corner or it is always in use by someone. It has been proven that only one third of the companies actually make an effort to shred their confidential documents before disposing them.
There are some people called the dumpster divers who are rooting out for such paper disposed improperly, who would then use these confidential information for their own criminal benefits. This is why shredding paper before disposing it is very important for you to protect your business against data breach incidents.
Business continuity management
Business continuity management is a plan that recognizes a company’s risk of being exposed to threats from inside and outside. Having a business continuity management plan can reduce the cost of having a data breach incident by a significant percentage. This is shown through global analysis of data breach incidents and having a business continuity management document is an important possession for your company. Many companies again do not have this document and thus fall dangerously into the traps of data breach incidents without any saving grace at all.
Cyber security policy
Unfortunately, many companies do not possess an official cyber security policy to save themselves during troubled times. More than two thirds of companies do not have such a policy even though it has also been proven that at least half of all data breach incidents are from criminal attacks on the cyberspace. This includes methods like having malware virus releases, introducing criminal entrance into the company’s system, or carrying out social engineering tactics. Having an official cyber security policy can prevent such attacks from posing a serious threat to your company’s confidential information.
Document management
Document management policies in companies have to be strict and appropriate. Every document produced by the company in the office has some important and confidential information somewhere. All documents produced by the company have to be issued, stored and disposed carefully and in the right way. Often it is a debate of which document is important enough to be shredded, and in our daily work decision making, we might underestimate the significance of certain documents thinking that they can be disposed normally without being shredded. This can in turn come back as a data breach problem any day if it gets into the wrong hands.
So companies have now thought of something called “Shred all” policy, where any document that leaves the office to be disposed has to be shredded. Providing enough working shredder to your office staff can easily uplift the usage of this policy and save your business from being attacked easily by dumpster divers.
Hard drives
Hard drives are as important as paper, if anything they are even more important. Just like how we use shredders to dispose important paper in a form where it cannot be reproduced, the same should be done with hard drives. A quarter of businesses have been found to never dispose their hard drives containing important information.
Disposing the information inside the hard drives by deleting them through your computers will not erase them for life. They can easily be found again by those who are able to trace back the data. Research by information security sources have shown that the only way to delete this important information permanently is by physically destructing the hard drive so that it cannot be pieced together again to trace back old data.
Allowing your employees to bring their own device to office
This is a big crime in any company, to allow your employees to do work with their own devices. This causes easy leak of information outside and also easy tapping of networks by criminals. Try to keep work within your office limits with the use of your company’s devices only.
At Papersavers Limited, we ensure proper disposal of your unwanted business documents with our on-site shredding services. Talk to us and find out more.
