It can be so easy to make a mistake with your documents and their safety. Documents often contain sensitive information that needs to be kept in a secure location, but most office workers forget this fact when they’re working with said documents. You could enter any local office and you’ll be able to spot a few issues straight away.
What Is A Sensitive Document?
A sensitive document can outline any document that contains
information about you, your company or another business that your company is
communicating with. This includes business partners and your own clientele.
Every office will have these types of documents. They’re an essential part of
running a business, but paper copies can become a hassle if they aren’t
properly managed. Minimising the risk that comes with keeping visible documents
should be a primary concern.
How Your Documents Are At Risk
We don’t think about it while we’re working, but the documents that we use for
our company on a day-to-day basis are crucial to our company’s success. They
may list anything from personal information of a client to financial details,
or even just have your own email and phone number on there (even just your work
ones). No matter what information is displayed, we can guarantee that it’s
sensitive in some way.
If you have documents lying on worktops or shoved into unlocked desk drawers,
then you already have a document security issue. The matter of the fact is,
when an employee is done for the night, the last thing they will think about is
putting away a file they will need again the next day. Because of this action,
which most of your employees will do, sensitive documents are left out for
prying eyes to see.
There are, however, many simple and easy ways to keep your documents and your
information safe without taking extreme measures. As always, there will be
different solutions for different problems, but there is a solution; and that’s
what’s important.
Set Up A Storage Policy
If you do decide to stick to the old ways of paper documents, then your company
could greatly benefit from having a document management and storage policy. Any
documents that are stored on-site should be stored in a secure location in the
office, itself. This storage location should be complete with lockable file
cabinets or a lockable cupboard. No one person – apart from trusted managers
and supervisors – should have the keys for these areas.
That might seem like a lot of work, but surely having an employee spend a
couple of moments asking for a key is better than having documents left out on
a table for the world to peek at? If not a key, then a coded door would work,
as well. It’s much harder to lose a code, and it can be easily changed if you
think there’s an issue.
Of course, your other solution is just to go entirely paperless. This will take
time, but just think about all of the space you’d free up around the office –
and how much more accessible documents would be.
