I just got another privacy notice from one more vendor in the mail. When I think of how easy it would be to steal my mail and my confidential data spreading everywhere it makes me nervous, and yet another notice arrives in my mail and this one has my entire credit card number on it. It seems that confidentiality is all that is on everyone’s mind these days. What’s amazing is that most people don’t really know the difference between good security and bad, what measures are appropriate and which are inadequate.

At our office we are shredding everything in sight. If it’s on paper at our office it’s in the shred box. I am not sure that it’s completely necessary. However, what is necessary is keeping confidential data in “your” control. If it goes out of the office you had better know if it is secure or not. With laws changing and becoming increasingly restrictive, one mistake could cost you your business.

Simply emailing confidential data is like dumping names, addresses, social security numbers and credit card numbers in the trash out side the office for anyone to take. We would never do that right? Then why are we sending everything through email? It’s no different, it’s totally insecure. We must begin to use more secure methods. At a minimum we should be encrypting our email.

I don’t like encrypting email because of the time it takes, the complexities and aggravation it can cause my client. When you take the cost of the encryption software, the time involved, and compare it to using a web portal, the difference is often staggering. Even if the portal cost you money it seems logical to look at web portals as a more efficient solution.

Here are some benefits to using web portals when transferring confidential data.

• Ease of use; customers understand logging on to a portal with a secure pin or password.
• Save the time it takes to encrypt email and the time your customer spends managing the key or password to unlock the email.
• Compliance; many states do not allow use of email for data transfer.
• Storage convenience; if the email or document is lost of misfiled then you can usually find it on the portal.
• Integration; if the portal is integrated with your document management system then all of the above are compounded.

Be sure you’re in control of the confidential data in your office and completely avoid email systems as the norm. Look for an integrated solution with a web portal. This business decision always makes dollars and sense.