Information is constantly being put at risk
Your employees, partners and contractors require access to your sensitive information to fulfil their responsibilities. Your prospects and customers may also need to receive commercially sensitive information including quotes, proposals, designs and reports.
Secure servers and portals can control who has access to the information stored within them, by using effective authentication and access controls. However to use the information it has to be downloaded to the user's computer for them to see and manipulate it. Once the information has been downloaded users frequently make local copies or share files with others who do not have access. This limits the value of server based access controls on which so many depend.
Out of ignorance or accident documents and emails can easily be:
- Accessed inappropriately
- Forwarded to the wrong "John Smith"
- Redistributed by users "unaware" of the NDA obligations
- "Archived" by someone who is moving on to a new company
Access controls, together with firewalls and encryption, can help prevent hackers and other illegitimate users from gaining access to information sources, but they do nothing to control what legitimate users do.
Disgruntled employees, opportunists or remote hackers may:
- Maliciously forward documents to a competitor
- Alter or remove key business information
- Sell employee or customer information to criminal/dubious organisations
- Steal your product designs, manufacturing processes or methodologies
Classification and security policies are not enough
While it is important to recognise which information is commercially or personally sensitive, to mark it, and process it diligently, defining procedures and processes is not enough. While the procedures and processes may be defined they may not be being put into practice. Without the application of appropriate technologies information remains at risk from ignorance, error and deliberate misuse.
Which technologies are appropriate depends on the sensitivity of the information, the environment in which the information is stored and used. Failing to understand the real threats can result in the wrong solutions being put in place; giving you a false sense of security.
We can help you identify your security vulnerabilities and help you to
persistently protect your information.