7 Critical Steps To Protect Your DataWritten by Paul Hrabal
To minimize significant risks arising from data loss, every company should take specific preventative measures to protect their critical business data. These measures fall into two broad categories: physical security and digital security. We will identify seven critical steps to ensure your data is secure, then look at additional protection required to keep your data available.Here, we look at physical security and three key steps a company should take to ensure their data is protected against environmental changes and physical theft. Step #1: Secure Access Protect critical computer equipment against physical theft by placing it in a separate physical space which has controlled, recorded access. Limit entrance to only authorized personnel. Step #2: Environmental Controls The space which houses critical computer equipment should be climate controlled through proper heating and air conditioning, including fail-over systems in event of main system failure. Fire suppression and temperature monitoring with an automatic notification system should be implemented. Step #3: Uninterrupted Power Ensure that backup power supplies, including surge suppression, are in place to provide power to key computer equipment in event of a primary power failure or instability in primary power supply. Now, we examine digital security and four key steps a company should take to ensure their data is protected against unauthorized access. Step #4: Firewalls A firewall should be placed between company’s internal computer network and each external network access point to stop unauthorized users from gaining access to internal network and company data. Step #5: Anti-Virus Software Each workstation and server in company should have anti-virus software installed and periodically updated with current virus definition files. Email servers should scan for viruses embedded in external messages and attachments prior to relaying them to internal email boxes. Step #6: Restrict User Access Access to network resources, applications and data files should be restricted exclusively to those employees with a “need to access.” Be sure to review user access rights regularly to reflect changes in employee responsibilities and when an employee leaves company, his or her login ID and access rights should be immediately removed. In some cases, current employees known to be leaving company may also need to have their access rights restricted to ensure safety and confidentiality of company data.
| | Has Everyone in Your Office Been Grafted, So There’s No More Evolving?Written by Susan Dunn, MA Clinical Psychology, The EQ Coach™
Has everyone in your office been grafted so there’s no more evolving? Let’s say “party line” is demanded of everyone, like a graft on a plant, so eventually everyone’s thinking same way. New people are hired, chosen to be as similar to old as possible, and then they get grafted. You have one person working in your office, one “thinking head” on many bodies. Nothing new is coming in, and no one’s free to evolve. You are setting yourself up to die out, and here’s why. The “domestication” of your office will dangerously compromise its fitness to compete. Look what happens when you do that to apple. Apples don’t grow “true-to-seed,” and there are potentially an infinite variety of apples possible. In grocery we see industry favorites--Golden Delicious, Winesap, Gala, Fuji, Red Delicious, but in an orchard, if trees were allowed to seed freely, you would see “apples” you would never know were “apples.” They could be purple, oval, lumpy, tasteless, so bitter you spit them out, soft and mushy, bright yellow, striped … anything is possible in “seeding” world. So, to ensure you get a Winesap, if that’s what you’re after, you graft “Winesap” onto a tree which could’ve produced anything, and now will produce Winesaps. According to fascinating book, “The Botany of Desire,” by Michael Pollan, grafting is endangering domestic apple.
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