Keeping hackers out of your network is a serious concern these days but many owners overlook the security of their physical environment. Your servers and data are vulnerable in your office to vendors and disgruntled employees. If your employees have access to data and you are not tracking what your employees are doing then this could become a potential vulnerability for your business. With identity theft on the rise and the majority of the perpetrators being current employees and vendors, protecting client data should be paramount. No matter how much security you have installed and in place, if someone can walk into your office and steal data, all of your security will have been in vain.

There are easy ways you can combat possible data theft in your firm and it hardly costs you anything additionally. First, you should start with where the data is housed, your server, you should have it completely secured whether in a locked closet, room, or cage. There should be minimal amount of people who have access to the server and when vendors are present it is ever important to know what they need access to and why. Second, you should protect your desktops and laptops, making them hard to disappear without someone noticing. While desktops are much harder to remove don’t underestimate the need to have every desktop locked while a user is away from their desk. This may seem trivial at first but as your staff get used to locking their computers when they get up and simply typing in their password when they return the benefit to you and the firm is well worth the trouble. You won’t have to worry about staff seeing or accessing documents they don’t have access to as well as vendors who just want to check their email real quick. Finally, you should ensure that any attached media such as USB hard drives or USB flash drives are disconnected and stored properly when finished working with them. This seems to be one of the most overlooked aspects of data theft, it’s easy, small and usually goes unnoticed. We often use attached media to quickly transfer data and immediately forget about it the drive once the data is copied to our workstation. Don’t let client data walk out the front door, remove and lock up any attached media.

Technology is ever changing and sometimes it’s difficult to stay on top of what you need to be looking out for next but when it concerns your client’s data it should be at the top of your mind. Making these simple changes in policy can dramatically decrease your chances of experiencing an internal data theft.