How Keeping Your Data Safe and Secure Can Optimize Your Business

When government and diplomatic secrets can slip through the cracks of the porous digital world, the rest of us are unfortunately more vulnerable than ever. As the U.S. government and many international leaders wallow in the anger and embarrassment of having 250, 000 cabled documents exposed,  businesses can consider the relevance of this lesson to their sales, Public Relations and marketing strategies.

If there is one thing we can learn from the ongoing Wikileaks debacle, it is that no data is completely safe, no matter how closely we guard it. Unfortunately Intellectual property theft is a downside of the digital age. However, there are steps we can take to protect our businesses, and most importantly, ourselves.

1. Create an employee security plan

In this security plan, clearly identify all assets that your business needs to protect, such as office computers, laptops and handphones. The plan should also inform employees about major security threats, and contain a step-by-step process on what they can do to protect the company’s assets. Have access levels for all staff, make sure that all information that is sensitive to your business is restricted and keep updated records of who has access to what data.

2. Establish anti-piracy as a tool

Anti-piracy usually ensures that intellectual property rights of a company are protected. Recognizing the importance of a anti-piracy is not enough – most companies do not understand the full potential of this tool.  To have a successful anti-piracy program you must fully integrate its legal function with that of sales, marketing and Public Relations. Utilizing the full potential of anti-piracy will help your business gain significant advantages in revenue generation and market penetration.

3. Practise safe Web surfing

Emphasize to employees the importance of not visiting unfamiliar Websites, which can infect a PC with viruses and all kinds of malicious software. Strongly advise them against clicking on attachments such as photos or PDFs, from unknown sources. To avoid e-mail fraud, tell employees to be careful of not only unsolicited e-mails, but suspicious looking e-mails from colleagues and other associates whose e-mails may have been hacked into.

4. Back up, back up, back up

If your only data backup is your computer and it is wiped out by a hard disk corruption or power failure, all your business data is gone. The basic rule for businesses is, if losing the data will affect your business, back it up. You can reinstall software, but damaged or lost business transactions are impossible to recover. Backing up business data is more than keeping things neat, it could be a matter of your business’s survival. There are many backup software programs available to help you along.

While most people understand the importance of data security, many fail to protect their electronic documents and data as they have the perception it is too troublesome. In fact, keeping your data safe and secure requires little effort and expense, but the returns are great – maintaining employee productivity and morale, good reputation, protecting your company’s ability to serve clients and preserving its continued existence.