Information Security for Small Businesses and Home Offices
If you’re a small business owner or have a home office, you’re used to doing it all – from sales & marketing to accounting to changing the light bulbs. Each day represents new opportunities and challenges which require you to you adapt and adjust as necessary. As a result, you’ve become an expert at multitasking and prioritizing. But within this realm of wearing so many hats, it’s easy for certain tasks to fall by the wayside.
Information security is one such task that often takes a backseat to other business concerns. However, protecting your data is one of the most important things to do to ensure the longevity and viability of your business. According to the Gartner Group, only 6 percent of companies survive longer than 2 years after losing data. The threats are numerous:
- malware and phishing attacks
- viruses and bots
- hacking intrusions
- document and file theft
- natural disasters
Luckily with some commonsense approaches and readily available resources, you can insulate your business from catastrophic data loss.
Protecting your business from data loss
Protecting your business from data loss doesn’t mean that you have to be an IT savvy individual, it simply means making a dedicated commitment to putting the right information security pieces in place. It’s important to understand that information represents the totality of your business data and includes both paper records and digital files and documents. Therefore, it’s crucial to have a solution for each format in which your data resides.
Offsite storage and document shredding
It’s likely that you have a collection of paper documents and files that may contain information key to your organization. These records may even represent vital records consisting of tax documents, client contracts and personnel files containing private information. As such, any catastrophic loss could put your business at risk. A disaster from fire or flooding could render these documents inaccessible or completely destroyed. Similarly, burglary and theft could also compromise your sensitive business data.
Rather than storing these hardcopy records in your office where they are at risk, it’s best to transfer them to a secure offsite location where they can properly protected and preserved. A professional offsite storage location can greatly reduce the risk of data loss exposure through:
- secure document protection facilities
- dedicated archival retention
- controlled and documented access
- strict inventory control
It’s equally important that files and documents are not kept longer than the required retention period as sensitive information contained within can be exposed to unnecessary risk. A regular scheduled shredding service provides a secure and regular disposal solution for your business data.
Secure backup for your business data
There’s no denying the importance of establishing a regular backup schedule for your business. However, in a busy day, it can be difficult to remember to backup your critical business information. And when you’re attempting to maximize every single minute of your day, changing a backup tape can cut into your productivity. An automated, online backup solution can alleviate an additional time and hardware investments while ensuring that your critical files are securely backed up each day.
Pacific Records Management provides records and information management services for small businesses and home offices throughout Stockton, Sacramento, Modesto, Fresno and Napa & Solano Counties. For more information, please contact us by phone or visit us at www.pacific-records.com.