As an entrepreneur and small business owners, your ideas are your bread and butter. It is important that you protect them. It is also important that you protect the work you do to take in idea from inspiration to tangible product or service. How do you do this? More importantly, how do you protect your proprietary information in a world where accessibility and remote collaboration are becoming the norm?
Encrypt Encrypt Encrypt
The best place to keep your sensitive and proprietary information is on an external encrypted or secure USB flash drive. The experts at Secure USB have built a secure USB flash drive that users access via a PIN that they put in manually via buttons on the drive itself. This adds an extra layer of protection between you and someone who might be trying to hack in and steal your information.
Encryption is also important for your email. One of the easiest and most common methods for encrypting your email is to access your email using the Thunderbird email client and a PGP client. If you don’t want to use Thunderbird, there are some email clients, like Outlook, that have built in encryption that you can use on your messages. And, of course, you can increase your privacy by using a self-hosted email instead of a free and web-based email service.
It’s not just your email messages that you’ll want to encrypt. Keeping instant messages and text messages private is also important. For this, you’ll want to download a tool called Signal. Signal is an encrypted private messaging/texting app that you can download on your phone and use when you want to talk about business topics.
Physical Files
It isn’t just digital information and property that you will need to protect. As you know, there are federal and state regulations that require you to keep some records (like financial records) in hard copy form for a specific number of years. Do not simply store these in a cardboard box in your office! At a bare minimum, they should be stored in a lockable filing cabinet.
To increase the security of your hard files, you’ll want to keep them closed in a locked container in a locked space. That space’s lock should include at least one extra layer of security like a keypad or a fingerprint scanner to prevent nefarious types from simply picking the lock. If you’re really worried about protecting your files, you’ll include these types of locking mechanisms on the files’ storage containers.
The Cloud
It’s 2016. Pretty much every business does at least some of its operating on the cloud. This work can be done either in-office or through remote access by telecommuting team members (or you, trying to get work done at home in your “off hours.”)
Most cloud servers have pretty good security mechanisms in place to keep hackers and traditional thieves away from their data. Take some time to research all of your options before choosing a cloud server to make sure that the server you choose is up to date on the latest security threats and knows how to stop them.
In addition, you’ll want to make sure that you and your employees are taking the proper steps to protect your company’s machines from those who might want to break in or hack in remotely and steal information while you are connected to the cloud. A lot of hackers can be thwarted with really awesome passwords that get changed regularly. It’s also a good idea to have robust malware detection measures in place. Finally, give your employees laptops on which they can do their work.
This is better than having employees supply their own computers. BYOC environments have long been known to put business materials and operations at risk. Why? Mostly because when an employee uses his or her own machine, their employers don’t have a lot of say about which software, apps, etc. can be installed. An employee may unknowingly download software with malware in it and, inadvertently, open up your company to a massive breach! When you supply the devices, you control what is installed and what isn’t. You control which sites on the web they can access and which they can’t. You can also keep better track of their productivity and monitor what they do when they’re on the clock.
Ideas are commodities now. That means that you need to put in some extra work to protect them once they leave your brain and become available to others as your business collaborates with clients. This goes beyond just security clearances and viruses. Prying eyes are also creative eyes. Use these tips to help keep your work as secure and protected as possible.