Prevent Your Employees from Making Document Mistakes
Critical for any business, is the safety of its vital documents. Any mistake in maintaining document security can lead to disastrous outcomes such as the confidentiality of your client being broken or even identity embezzlement. Even if you might be aware of the significance of document security measures, your employees might not be and this could pose a huge risk to your organisational data.
Let’s look at some of the document security errors that even the most key employees make.
Do-it-yourself shredding
Getting rid of old documents and relevant paperwork can sometimes be a chore and hence getting it done by your staff could be a sliver of convenience. But there are a number of risks associated to it. Firstly, the shredder being used could be a basic model without additional functionalities of shredding without trace and secondly the gesture of handing over old documents to staff could result in the papers not being destroyed properly. Moreover, the staff involved in doing this task may have to take time off the work and may not exactly be the right people to be viewing the documents, no matter how irrelevant or old, as the papers could have sensitive matter that could be used to the organisation’s disadvantage. To avoid this, consider hiring professional shredding services.
Wrong timing
Although it might sound incredulous, there are rules to be consideredon when documents should actually be destroyed. Hence, if old documents have been entrusted onto a third party or office staff to be done, the documents to be destroyed may be too early to get rid of or they should have been shredded a long time ago. Sometimes, organisations need to keep onto certain information such as legislative documents and hence it must be maintained carefully rather than throwing in the pile of unwanted documents to be shredded.
Keeping mum
Sometimes it is important to maintain a stoic silence on the information stated on business documents, no matter how old or dog-eared they might appear. Certain information should not be disseminated or discussed with other staff members, especially if it holds sensitive or classified data. Employees must be made clear on guidelines and rules in the organisation, with regards to certain types of information. For instance, a staff member sending an email to a third party outside could still have the client signature line or some other information that should not be given out. Forwarding such critical content could expose the corporate relationship data of the organisation to rival companies. This also applies to communications within the company and distribution of data throughout the organisation. It is important to have a procedure in place to disseminate correspondence within the company or even assign a particular printer to be used for printing specific data.
Image source: Pixabay
Careless attitude
Sometimes a casual attitude can help defuse stress and bring about camaraderie in the office, but sometimes a casual attitude can also be interpreted as a careless attitude that could regard the employee as simply approachable. It is important to note that in the process of dealing with significant data, “casual” should not be assumed. In today’s workplace, smart devices rule everywhere and if they are left carelessly about, they could become gateways to illegal dissemination to third parties.
In order to prevent future risks to document security. The best way of maintaining an organisation’s reputation is to have a proper document security system place. Staff members must be made aware of the kind of documents that should be kept in specific places and what kind of data needs to be shredded by either professionals or a high end shredder and whom they should approach for assistance if they are unsure of what needs to be done next.
Author Bio: The article was contributed by Locklizard, a digital rights management company producing document and content encryption software products. Visit their website www.locklizard.com for more information.
