Temporary staffing

You are an owner of a successful company. You hire a lot of employees, some of them have worked for you from the beginning and some of them are temporary staff. Do you really trust all of them? No matter how big your company is, data security should be one of the most important concerns.

Securing company’s data is a very important and complex process. It includes a disaster recovery plan as well as restricting access to data (so no unauthorized personnel such as some temporary staffing would be able to look through confidential data). Of course, you may say that your disaster recovery plan covers all possibilities of data loss, and that you don’t have to do anything else.

Let us consider, however, what would happen if some confidential information were to leak outside of your company? Nowadays the industrial espionage has become one of the biggest sources of revenue loss in the IT industry. There was a very particular accident that proves an importance of very strict data security methods. A big company was preparing for an important contract. They created an offer, and were going through the last stages of negotiations.

One day, however, one of they rivals made an offer that they couldn’t beat. That offer was very specific – it looked like their competition knew exactly what to do to ensure their loss. After thoroughly looking through the security cameras~ tapes, the company managers discovered that one of their temporary staffing cleaner was responsible for stealing the data. Everyday after she finished her duty, she logged in to their main computer and copied all the information that was stored there. Of course, when they found that out, she was long gone (after a short investigation they also found, that she was a graduate of one of the best computer science universities in their country).

Of course not all temporary staffing personnel must be spies; sometimes they are just not instructed well enough to be able to protect your company information. To ensure data security you have to develop a specific process, different from the data loss emergency plan. As it was in case of disaster recovery planning, as it is with data security – there is no perfect, universal plan. Restricting access to data, checking the past of temporary staffing – those are only the basics of a good data protection plan.

There are many ways of obtaining confidential information. The abovementioned case of temporary staffing professional turning rogue may be marginal, but for a good reason. There are also many other ways to obtain crucial information. For example, there are everyday wastes problem – and managing your company’s rubbish should the first step to really secure your data and your money.