Quick InfoSec Guide For SMEs

At the start of every new fiscal year/quarter all businesses review their performance and plan ahead. One of the critical elements within a business environment is the information –customer data, financial records, employee data, IP etc. Information forms the core of an SME and needs to be stored securely so that it grows both, in value and importance. As a business, what would you do if you lost an important document? Is there a backup plan in place to cover for such loss? The decision making process must also include an acknowledgement of protecting your business assets, such as documents and important records.

Digitising important documents is a great way to reduce the need for physical storage space capacity and incur savings on cost. The organisation can quickly retrieve digital documents and increase staff productivity. Customer service also improves along with better return on investments. Converting documents to digital format ensures that you have a safe copy outside your office and gives you immediate access to that information in the case of a disaster or emergency.

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SMEs can apply the following tips that will help them to effectively protect their asset ie the company information:

• Create digital copies of key financial records, insurance policies and HR forms. This ensures that no document is lost.

• Avoid system compatibility issues by creating documents in standard formats like .pdf or .jpg. Today, information is accessed outside the confines of an office through mobile devices as well, hence becomes more important to have the information readily accessible across platforms.

• Do not limit digitisation only to the paperwork. All multimedia used for operations and marketing purposes (images, videos, etc) must also be digitised. This is the IP of the organisation and needs to be saved for future reference and sometimes for compliance reasons.

• Copy the archived information to a CD or DVD so that it can be stored with legal advisors as a physical back up.

• Update the archive once a year whenever there is a significant change in your assets.

By applying some of these tips, the benefits are manifold. One can expect easier and faster data maintenance, indexing, scanning and storage. Going digital helps SMEs in being better equipped to deal with recovery in case of any disaster.

While evaluating the IT plans, it is recommended that going digital when it comes to information protection, is given a high priority.

The author is Managing Director, India & SAARC, Symantec.