When running any commercial business, department or government organization today, the last thing that you likely want to impact your organization with is a data breach. According to a recent study on the cost of data breaches in the past year, U.S. companies paid an average of $ 5.4 million to cope with the repercussions of data breaches. Don’t allow your organization to become a victim of a data breach. Here are 5 ways to ensure information security in your workplace:

1. MAKE DATA SECURITY A TOP CONCERN

Through simple, easy to follow security policies, you can train your employees on information security best practices. Additionally, you could appoint a safety committee to help keep security issues a focus.

2. KEEP PHYSICAL INFORMATION SECURE

Keep all physical information your company has secured by only allowing certain personnel to handle it. Give keys or passes to only those who need to have access to that information. Keep tabs on who has handled any sensitive documents and when.

3. CREATE A SECURE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT POLICY

Keep track of all sensitive documents throughout their life cycle and dispose of them based on compliance regulations. Create a data security checklist and make sure all employees adhere to it.

4. DESTROY HARD DRIVES

The only way to be completely sure that your sensitive data will not fall into the wrong hands is to destroy data from hard drives permanently through hard drive sanitization (otherwise known as degaussing), destruction or in some cases both. Be aware that many office electronics, such as copiers and multi-purpose machines, now contain hard drives that store data, not just computers. If you lease office equipment, check with the vendor to make sure that they dispose of media containing data using secure, environmentally sound processes.

5. BRING IN A PROFESSIONAL

At SEM, your business’ information security and well-being is important to us. If your company is required to be in compliance with certain privacy laws or meet even higher secure compliance levels, you probably want to minimize that huge risk of a data breach. At SEM we offer solutions to all of these information security concerns by offering expertise with both a certificate of destruction for data destruction and sanitization of every media type or provide you equipment solutions that will allow you to control your secure destruction program to erase or destroy your organizations data under your own roof.

At SEM, we help businesses and government organizations find real solutions for addressing real information security needs that will reduce their waste disposal costs and improve their environmental footprints, with shredding and recycling service programs that are convenient and secure.

For 50 years SEM has been the largest direct supplier of information destruction and sanitization equipment in the US – where our reputation speaks for itself.

For more information contact us at 800-225-9293.