How To Keep Your Company Safe

By Dennis McKonkie

Owning a business is exciting and there are a lot of things to consider and manage. Your company is dealing with information from people and sometimes the information can be sensitive and personal. To protect your customers, your employees, and yourself, it is best to have a great plan of defense. This covers everything from the physical location of your office and the internet and web pages that you probably use on a daily basis. It can be confusing on what you need to protect and how you can protect information. This article will discuss what you may want to protect in your company and ways you can effectively protect that information.

Customer Information and Privacy

Depending on what kind of information you need from your patients, you will want to take different protocols and procedures. If you are in a medical environment, you will need set up secure systems that conform to HIPAA regulations and standards. This allows your patients to feel safe about giving their information to you as a company. Setting up a tight security ensures that only specific people can get to your customers private information. If you have no clue where to start, there a companies that specialize in building security systems for customer information. If you don’t want to have another company come in, there are different strategies you can use to protect their information yourself.

Employee Information and Privacy

You may not think that this is extremely different from customer information and private but there are some different steps you can do to protect your employees information. Make it a priority to educate your employees on internet safety and proper protocols. You can invest in an AWS Firewall that will protect your employees information and your company’s as they search the web throughout the time they are in the office. This keeps your employees and your company’s information safe and sound.

Products and Ideas

The last thing you want is for someone to steal your idea or product and make a lot of money off of it while you don’t make anything. You should consider taking a look at the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office for help. Applying for a patent can be a long process that takes time but definitely pays off. If you don’t want to go that route, if you hire an attorney you can always have agreement papers for the people who work with you and that you do work with. There are a number of different agreements such as non-disclosure, non-competent, and work-for-hire agreements that fit your specific work situation.

Physical Space

If you have an office or some kind of space where everyone meets, you need to take precautions to make sure that each employee’s information is safe and secure. Have patients clock in and out with badges, fingerprints, or cards. This prevents other people from signing in and out of other people’s accounts. Protect the building by making sure it has the proper locks and systems in place so people who aren’t allowed in the office space aren’t able to get in.

Accounts

If you have a website where patients purchase items or reserve and schedule appointments, you probably have some kind of private information on their hands. If you have an app, game or anything else where a user will login and has set up an account, they probably entered in some information to make the account.

To keep this information safe you can do some simple things to ensure that your customers and users information isn’t being stolen or used by other people. Make sure that you communicate through email that is secure and safe. There are companies that provide security and encryption so you have the right amount of privacy for all of your emails.

Have you used any of these techniques or systems to protect your company’s information? Start the conversation below by commenting on what you’ve done to keep your company safe.

Dennis McKonkie attended MIT where got his bachelors degree in Computer Science.

He has worked in creating complex databases for many large companies and corporations as a Computer Science Consultant.