In 2012, human errors and system glitches were the cause for almost two-thirds of data breaches globally. Malicious attacks—and those include insider theft—accounted for almost half of the reported breaches in 2012, in the U.S. alone.
An open environment can be a really good thing. There are businesses today preaching the virtues of open book finances, and there are certainly perks to be had through offering your employees an inside look. But that said, there aren’t many businesses that need to allow employees to have access to important data. Viewing it is one thing; access to it is another.
If you don’t have them already, you should seriously consider creating levels of security in your business. If you do have security levels, it’s important to keep them up-to-date based on movements in the business. Here are a few things to get you started.
- Group your data: It might be a tedious task, but grouping data into levels, based on classification and need-to-know is the first step in creating levels. You need to know who will need to have access to what, and at what level of clearance employees will get access to those groups.
- Assign groups: Your CEO will want and need access to just about everything. The middle managers won’t. Find out which groups use which sets of data and assign the groups based on what they need to get their jobs done.
- Set up passwords: Face it: people are bad about passwords. They’ll use the same password for every account they have. Create secure passwords for every individual and make them commit them to memory.
- Create a process for change: If an employee leaves the business, that person’s password and access to their data should be immediately restricted. If you use keycards to get into various sections of your office building, those should either be confiscated or deactivated immediately. Create a process with Human Resources that allows you to perform these actions as quickly as possible.
- Back up your data: Sometimes, employees don’t like that they’re asked to leave a business. In the UK alone, cases of data theft from disgruntled employees has risen 58% in the last year. Even if it’s only a list of email subscribers, any data theft or destruction can cause serious damage to your business. Backing up your data to the cloud using a cloud back-up solution that encrypts your data can make sure you keep things safe and sound.
- Don’t be stoic: Things are always changing in the technological world. There are additional threats to security almost every day, coming both internally and externally. Adjust your security system to fit the needs of the modern day. Things can change fast, and you have to be able to adapt.