Lock the doors against malware attacks; batten down the hatches against cyber warfare; pull up the drawbridge to prevent online criminals battering down the door to reach your company’s treasure trove of valuable data assets.
Whilst all eyes are peeping over the firewalls and security measures at the sophisticated threats outside, along comes an enemy within and takes what you most cherish right from under your very nose.
The Moral of The Tale?
Don’t focus only on external threats when dangers can lurk close to the workplace. A 2015 Ponemon Institute study reveals that over 80% of staff take company data with them when they leave a company. Whether the motibe is vindictive, a genuine error, an attempt to gain a competitive advantage, or a quick route to immediate income streams, data theft of any type can be damaging to your company.
How Can Data Theft Affect My Business?
An employee data theft is likely to have disastrous consequences for your company:
- Priceless assets you have built up over time can be irretrievably lost or devalued.
- Loss of your competitive edge will doubtlessly impact your profits.
- Dissemination of private data received from 3rd parties exposes the company to legal action.
- In those cases where the theft involves customer’s data, you can be sure that their confidence levels will be affected.
- Your brand’s public image will suffer as a result..
To make things even worse remedying the situation will be costly (if even possible) and whatever legal action you need to resort to will strain your mental and physical resources and involve the risk of failure.
It’s not just the big boys that need worry – Sure the media only covers the sensational landmark cases, but in the background SMBs are feeling the cost of these data thefts DAILY.
Internal Data Thefts Are Big Business
It’s not just workers on their way out the door who delve into the data pot. At the beginning of 2015, financial services multinational Morgan Stanley fired one of its financial advisors for stealing data on 350,000 wealth management clients. In short, the data security measures in place did not protect against someone in a relatively junior position gaining incredible access to key data.
Cloak and Contain
IT experts are calling on all businesses to limit access so that untrustworthy employees cannot open a company’s data box of goodies in the first place. But how practical is this? Employees often need access to sensitive and/or valuable data to be able to perform tasks at work properly.
How Can Monitoring Help Protect My Data?
Monitoring adds another layer of data security protection beyond access limitations, two-factor authentication and system audits, and has added value in being the only strategy that actually acts as a deterrant.
Think Beyond the Desktop
Whilst you might consider your workstations, servers and data to be impregnable against employee subterfuge, don’t forget that the very nature of the boundaries between “work” and “private” communications are changing.
With Bring-You-Own-Device rapidly becoming the norm for smartphones, driven by the growing power and usefulness of the devices themselves, companies are moving into a world where privately owned devices are used to store vast amounts of proprietary information.
The reality is that it’s no longer enough to monitor just desktops. You need a system that covers you across ALL devices and platforms and alerts you whenever files are leaving your company network, to be truly safe.
Digital Endpoint™ created KnowIT, a Cloud Based Employee Monitoring Software which allows companies to protect data via USB and Bluetooth connection across Mobile Devices, Macs & PCs.
Want to learn more?