Despite the development of security tools, the number of leaks of confidential information of companies and individuals is not decreasing. At the same time, organizations are reluctant to report such incidents, seeking to hide the extent of the damage. Through which channels corporate data is leaked? Here is more about it.
Internal threats and the fight against them
Recently, there has been an increase in the number of incidents involving the theft of intellectual property of high-tech European and American companies by interns from developing countries, so temporary workers are sometimes also referred to as this type. In terms of direction, the threat posed by such intruders is non-directional – the intruders try to steal as much information as possible, often without even suspecting its value and having no idea how they will use it. The most common way to gain access to information or the ability to copy it is to imitate a production need. This is where they are most often caught.
According to the researchers, thanks to the spread of remote work, company employees have gained access to important data from home, which has opened up opportunities for information theft. In this way, employees can synchronize corporate information on their own gadgets, that are not fully protected.
Another way to spoil the life of competitors is cyber attacks. But here experts admit: very often you don’t need to hack anything, everything is already on the surface. One of the most popular system vulnerabilities is associated with open directories, which store all the directories and files of the site. It happens that such important information remains unprotected. Usually, these are mistakes of programmers or system administrators who forget to close access to certain directories. Even a novice can find an open file if you show him how to shorten the path to the desired folder.
Confidential information can be your most valuable business asset. This could be customer data, promising developments, or trade secrets. Regardless of the size of the leak, it harms profits and reduces the level of customer confidence.
Virtual data room: how to protect corporate data?
Following datarooms.fr,since all employees who have access to information are potential thieves of information, protection methods are planned in such a way as to strike a balance between the availability of information for legal use and its protection from leakage. The traditional choice between availability and security is made by each company depending on the level of paranoia in the corporation.
To avoid data leaks, modern companies use innovative digital solutions for organizing secure business deal workflow. In this case, we are talking about a virtual data room, a cloud-based platform that ensures a secure collaborative workspace, and a well-organized electronic data archive.
Secure data room management systems have built-in controls for the main threats and provide:
- safety of documents. One of the effective solutions to this problem is backup. As a rule, in the data room it is possible to configure both automatic backup according to a schedule and at the user’s command;
- access control and differentiation of user rights. To authenticate a user when entering the system, the following can be used: password; USB keys, biometric authentication, watermarks;
- confidentiality and authentication of documents. The main solution for ensuring the authenticity of a document is an electronic digital signature;
- logging user actions. All user actions in the data room are recorded, and if problems arise, the culprit can be identified. Also, the software saves the history of changes to documents and all their versions.