Office Document Strategies Blog

Physical Security Still Important In Protecting Data

Posted by Lee Kirkby on Wed, Oct 23, 2019 @ 07:10 AM

Given the massive amount of discussion that everyone hears about cyber security sometimes the physical protection of data is overlooked when considering the importance of the information every business holds.  This is a natural occurrence since so much of what is stored is done so in electronic formats.Manufacturing_equipment

Backup and off site protection

When thinking of electronic information the protocols and systems used to conduct regular backup and protection must be constantly reviewed and renewed.  Being able to recover network systems easily and quickly can be a mission critical situation in the event of power failure, hardware failure or some sort of malware attack.  The protection against this is the orderly, regular backup and redundancy employed so a clean, current copy of systems and data can be accessed when problems arise.

If a physical event occurs which affects the network systems either in house or in the cloud, the ability to access a redundant copy from an outside source is a must.  Since there are so many viable ways to design and conduct this type of secure backup it is something which should be readily available to almost any business at a cost effective price.  The real cost in the end is building it into your daily work plans so that the correct data is stored and recoverable at all times.

What is your retention requirement and proper destruction protocol for any remaining paper records.

Non electronic security

While much effort and time is expended on the electronic stuff these days it is important for everyone to be aware of the physical materials that are also vulnerable in a business.

Do you still receive and hold paper correspondence, orders, bills of lading or other important documents?  What is your protocol for dealing with these, especially if they are a smaller part of your records these days.  Its easy to forget about them and not provide the security their importance requires.

What about products, supplies, orders sitting waiting for shipment, goods being received for inventory or processing?  All of these physical items need to be secured as required and protected from loss or destruction.  Is there a pool of equipment used in the field or on site which needs to be tracked and controlled?  Often this type of item is taken for granted and the security and control is left adhoc leading to potential costs and delays when things go missing.

Premises

Security of premises as a given in most businesses.  Alarms, fire control and warning systems, entry control for more vulnerable product areas, and regular physical inventory checks are a pretty common practice that most businesses undertake.  The risk with all of these areas is that the attention they need gets relaxed due to the time and effort being spent of cyber and electronic protections. 

Unfortunately, all of these areas must be dealt with as part of any business security system.  The information held in physical structures is as important as that in electronic and making sure that both are managed is an important part of any business security system.

Lee K 

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Topics: Paper shredding, shredders, cyber security