With all of the corporate and personal devices that we use for work, it is difficult to make a device specific security possible. Employees are doing a majority of work on their personal devices which means that they are bringing work home with them, accessing corporate data on unsecured networks. We've come up with some steps to help secure documents and data in a time of BYOD.
- Forget devices, focus on data. Trying to secure every device that is in your office is impossible. Instead, try to take a more information centric approach to security. This means that businesses should be enabling security on the document itself, instead of relying on secure devices.
- Prioritize the most valuable information. Start your security plan by focusing on what your most important documents are. Is sensitive information going out over email to employees or clients? It would be a good idea to get an enterprise digital rights management solution that will provide you with the critical metrics that are needed to know when and where that information has been opened, shared or printed.
- Know who your users are. Managing permissions on important information is crucial to securing data. That gives you complete control over document access and gives managers the ability to restrict or limit access.
- Be user friendly and have a transparent solution. Document security should be integrating cloud applications and currently employed document types. It should not require excess time or bring in new file types or processes, which will slow down company workflow.
Company data is constantly in motion, with countless devices and storage services. It would be too difficult to control every employee’s usage of information from every endpoint. The only valid approach to document security is to take this new trend in stride and have an information-centric approach.