“Information Security” encompasses all measures taken to ensure personal, confidential or commercial information cannot be accessed, misused or compromised by unauthorised users. There is more to information security than ensuring that employees comply with relevant privacy and protection laws.

If you mishandle customer information, for instance, it can result in a loss of trust in your business and considerable damage to your reputation.  In addition, when business confidentiality is breached, company information can be used by unauthorised individuals to commit illegal activity (i.e. fraud or defamation), which can lead to costly lawsuits for employers.

The Benefits of Document Protection

Along with maintaining a good company reputation, protecting business documents provides other benefits. Protecting your documents can create more efficient processes, a reduced risk of privacy breaches, and a reduction in the time and resources dedicated to detecting such breaches.

One of the most efficient and comprehensive ways to maintain document protection within a business is engaging employees in regular data breach training.

Whether information is compromised online or in the physical world, employees should be apprised of current threats and know how to detect and intercept potential threats to document security. This will both protect the integrity of your business and empower your employees to take charge of threatening situations.

What Information Must Be Protected?

Other than information which falls under intellectual property rights (IPR) laws (i.e. patents, trademarks or copyrighted information), any information produced by a business must be protected. Confidential business information can encompass any number of documents, including trade secrets, business plans, marketing strategies, advertising, and financial and taxation information, among many others.

What Happens if Confidentiality is Breached?

Everybody knows that information is power. So, in the wrong hands, your confidential information can be used against you. This can lead to a ruined personal life, and a career left in tatters. On a professional level, if your data security is comprised, it can cause severe damage to your business, as well as a loss of privacy for your employees and customers. This, in turn, can lead to substantial financial and reputational losses for your business.

How to Ensure Your Documents Are Confidential

As an employer, it is good practice to ensure that you disseminate information to your employees on a strictly “need to know” basis. This principle is specifically designed to ensure the number of people authorised to access confidential business documents is limited. In order to do this, employers should consider how you can restrict access to confidential information solely to those who are required to view it. This is one of the most effective ways to ensure confidential business documentation does not fall into the wrong hands.
Even more effective than this is the regular destruction of your documents and digital data. By shredding documents and destroying hard drives and digital media that you no longer need, you are cutting off a potential breach of confidentiality at its source.

Don’t trust the destruction of your confidential business documents to just anyone, trust the experienced team at Shred Easy. As Brisbane’s premier document destruction company, you can trust us with all your paper shredding, commercial shredding and corporate document destruction needs.