Tips to prevent losing important company data

Tips for Company Data Loss Prevention

First, owners and managers need to be proactive about security and backup of vital company information. The loss prevention procedure should spell out duties of all employees in this vital area.

Any plan on protection of important company data starts with ensuring the company locations that utilize computer equipment are organized, clean and environmentally stable. Equipment should not be too crowded and be protected from accidental shock damage from people or equipment passing by. Whenever possible the electrical power for computing systems should be on a sine-wave uninterrupted power supply. Additionally, each computer should have a surge protector between its power source and the computer.

Security Software

Each computer systems should have approved total security software selected and approved by the company owner or information technology supervisor. All systems should use the same software. This software should protect against all known forms of viruses, Trojans, malware and spyware. It should update automatically each night or on command from the IT supervisor.

Data Backups Plan and Procedure

One of the most important things a company can do to protect from loss of critical data is to have a data back-up plan. Very few companies properly back up their software and data. Here is an outline for an excellent software and data backups plan.

At each office outside the home office a series of seven back up tapes are kept in a fire safe vault. Each tape is labelled with a day of the week for Monday through Saturday. The seventh tape is for a weekly back up made the first thing each Monday morning. Once a month another backup tape is made. The tape is labelled for that month and sent by courier to the home office. This back up system keeps backups close to operations. If data backups are made automatically, each backup copy should be verified by a human quality check to make sure the back-up software is working properly. It might be a good idea to schedule maintenance of all data systems to prevent data loss at all times. This data back-up plan also ensures that monthly data is stored away from the location in a separate safe location.

Other steps that can be taken to protect company data involve a thorough and constant diagnostic maintenance program that tries to anticipate problems with data storage systems, such as HDD's and online servers.

The information technology supervisor should have a training program set up to education all employees on employment and twice a year on data protection procedures.