Wednesday, August 15, 2007

10 things you can do to make sure your data doesn’t walk out the door

This is important. People will sneak into your offices, open your computers and steal your hard drives. How do I know? My client has a CCTV recording of it happening to their top Administrative Assistant's computer just this past weekend.

Debra Littlejohn Shinde says, "Let’s look at what you should be doing to keep your data from walking out the door...
#1: Practice the principle of least privilege
#2: Put policies in writing
#3: Set restrictive permissions and audit access
#4: Use encryption
#5: Implement rights management
#6: Restrict use of removable media
#7: Keep laptops under control
#8: Set up outbound content rules
#9: Control wireless communications
#10: Beware creative data theft methods formats

Remember that your data can walk out in many different formats. A user can print out a document and carry it out in paper form or a thief can steal printed documents from trash cans if the paper hasn’t been shredded. Even if you’ve implemented a technology such as rights management to prevent copying or printing documents, a person could take a digital or film photograph of the content onscreen or even sit and copy the information by hand. Be aware of all the ways your data can leave the premises and take steps to protect against them." (more)