With the exponential growth in mobile devices and their uses, it comes as no surprise that security has now become a topmost priority for IT officials in any company. With the passage of time, companies are reporting more and more security breaches from outside. No matter what they do, after a while, they have to go through the same thing again.
But the surprise here is that IT professionals are not only worried about external breaches, they are also worried about internal security risks as well. 54% of IT managers and in charges in a study stated that their company is threatened by internal risks. Most of it from stored content that was not properly identified. Furthermore, 90% of organizations in the United States reported having their data stolen or lost at least once.
This is not just a financial dilemma but it also affects the thinking of the company’s customers and clients. If security breaches are rampant in a company, it will rapidly lose all its client base.
If it’s internal, where is it?
It’s on your table, in your drawer, in your cabinet, lying on the printer output tray, etc. Yes! You’ve guessed it right. It’s paper. And employees are still using a whole lot of it. According to a survey, 58% of employees are still taking out prints of forms, that they received in email, and hand-signing them. 27% of workers reported that they still chose to get a print out of any document that they needed to review instead of doing it on the screen.
61% of data breaches in companies that had less than 500 employees, were due to paper involvement. So, how much does your company depend on paper?
Lack of Document Management and Security Tools
In companies with more than 100 employees, only 26% reported that they had access to proper document management and security tools. This means that a majority of small businesses have large paper trails, or if they have transitioned to a paperless environment, they don’t have the proper security measures in place.
This means that most of the employees of small to medium businesses share their important, private and confidential documents over open Wi-Fi devices or through free and unencrypted tools like DropBox, etc. The most common place for having your data stolen is through one of these channels. If companies know this, then they are intentionally putting their private data at risk.
Lack of Visibility and Traceability
With a paper trail, you don’t have any knowledge about whether the document has reached the proper destination or not, it has been reviewed or not, whether someone else has seen it or not.
What to do?
Scared? Don’t be. There are easy solutions to take care of all these problems.First of all, you have to go paperless. Paper is already on its way out of the organization. It’s bad for the ecosystem, it’s bad for security, and it’s bad financially.
Secondly, get a good document security and management tool for your official network. This will make sure that employees will get the right to open the documents that they have been authorized for. And people not authorized for any document will not have access to it. Furthermore, all the documents will be sent through secure and encrypted apps that will protect the data during traveling as well. When an employee sends a document to his colleague, he will be able to trace that document through its entire lifecycle. Also, you need to educate your staff about document security and how to utilize your document security and management software optimally.
