With valuable and confidential data making its way online, it has never been more critical and urgent to secure it. Yet, today, identity thieves and hackers require surprisingly little to infiltrate and illegally penetrate even the most secure documents. Over the decades, it has been seen how many organizations have been severely affected by data breaches and the loss of confidential information.
Employing several best practices can help to ensure confidential documents are not misplaced and stay secure. Using these strategies smartly can help your business not find itself on the wrong side of a data breach, which could not only destroy your revenue but customer confidence and your reputation as well. So let's look at a few ways how to ensure that your confidential documents stay safe with you.
- Take inventory of all your valuable data: This is a simple and effortless rule that applies to every vital piece of documentation you own or your business possesses. For instance, if your company is relocating, you need to take inventory of sensitive data. In order to secure information adequately, you must first know about the knowledge that your company retains. A smart way is to break down the data by sector, industry, client, or any other delineating aspect and account for every folder you have that pertains to the topic. Once you've relocated, it will become easy for you to know that all information or data has been accounted for in the new location. If not, it could become effortless to search for it since it will become clear what is missing, or you can employ an efficient backup plan to ensure that no data has been breached.
- Avoid leaving valuable documents lying around: Documents containing financial information, credit card statements, and billing invoices can sometimes extract sensitive information via social engineering. Hackers and criminals can redact information from such documents and steal your finances without your knowledge.
- Destroy physical documents securely: If you no longer require a document containing valuable data, do not just throw it away. It can be an excellent idea to shred it, and even after shredding the material, you may want to ensure that the shredded matter is destroyed. Perhaps you could even use a cross shredder to ensure that no one can reconstruct from the shredded files.
- Avoid sending sensitive PDF files within or outside your business: You will want to at the very least encrypt confidential documents before sending them outside of your organisation. While passwords may seem quick and simple to use, you have to find a way of distributing the password securely. Also, once a recipient has a password-protected PDF and the password to open it, they can remove the password and share it with others.
- Control access to your PDF files sensibly: Let's say that your business has decided there is a legitimate need for you to send specific information to another company or user. In that case, you must assure that the PDF file you are sending is secured and access to valuable information is restricted. For instance, if the user no longer requires access to the data already sent to them, you could revoke access once the file has been viewed. Ensure that you have stringent controls in place to restrict access to PDF files sent to users to avoid unintended misplacement of the data. For example, you would at least want to stop copying and pasting, screenshots, editing, and printing.
- Implement business policies: The basic foundation of protecting data in your business is to implement company policies. You need to ensure that safeguarding initiatives are written into the fabric of your business, and every team member understands and follows those rules. In many cases, company policies may take various forms. But you can choose the right policy conducive to data protection, such as digital rights management that offers complete and thorough document security.
- Track your confidential data: Are you aware of where your confidential information exists within your business at any given time? Do you employ a system whereby you can view how such documents are being stored or accessed? If not, you can be confident that your confidential information is not secure. For instance, if you do not know where or how your valuable data is been stored or accessed, you may not know if the document has gone missing if you were not aware of where it was in the first place. Digital rights management provides you with complete access and data logs on who is using your documents. You can track documents, review how users view and access your data, and more.
- Employ robust document security solutions: One way to prevent your computer from being infected or compromised is to install an antivirus or anti-malware solution. This can prevent your system from becoming infected and spreading the infection to other computers on your network. However, firewalls and anti-virus software are only the first line of security that could be compromised in the event of a hack. The only proven way of ensuring that your confidential documents are not misplaced is to protect them with digital rights management [DRM] solutions.
DRM: Complete safety of your PDF documents
DRM security ensures that only the right people can access confidential documents. It mitigates all forms of internal as well as external threats by tightly controlling access and use. As a document security system, DRM ensures that your information is in safe hands and protected at all times giving you comprehensive control over what you can do with your documents even after you've sent them out to users.
Conclusion
No matter the business you run, you have classified information that you must secure. Secure your PDF files containing valuable data regarding your finances, clients, IPR, to proprietary content that is critical to the operations of your business. Using the right PDF DRM system will ensure the protection of your digital documents, providing you with end-to-end security at all times.