How to Protect the Most Valuable Online Asset Data

Sep 1, 2007 12:00 PM

Do you know what your most valuable asset online is? It's your intellectual property, also known as your data.

Proprietary data loss, theft and inadvertent exposure on the Web are real and unavoidable dangers going hand-in-hand with modern business operations. Among many other culprits, information can be lost or compromised due to human error, corruption, digital attack and/or fraud.

But routine, real-time data audits provide a proactive defense strategy companies can use to protect their data. Here are five ways that data audits will protect a company:

1. By proactively protecting their intellectual property, companies can significantly reduce their risk and the consequences of online compromise. Regulatory non-compliance ramifications are arguably the most detrimental, given the need to comply with government regulations such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and Gramm-Leach-Bliley.

2. An effective data audit will integrate digital inventory practices with clear accountability trails and consequences should security be compromised.

3. Audits mitigate risk while providing a transparent access trail along with details showing any structural and transactional changes. So recovery is faster, easier and more cost-effective.

4. Audits help administrators monitor activities in real time, so data can be located and taken offline before major consequences occur.

5. The mere existence of data auditing processes can deter thieves, curtail misuse and ensure employees think longer before they act.

When considering the quantity of electronic data within each organization, data audits can seem immensely time-consuming and expensive. While undoubtedly an enormous task, electronic data auditing and proactive strategies are possible and manageable. Automation, by far, is the easiest and most cost-effective means to protect your intellectual property. Automation offers a scalable solution, rarely escalating in price as organizations grow. And, by having an automated system you are minimizing the burden on employees and managers. More importantly, these systems require little to no human intervention. This means they can adapt to any organization throughout its lifecycle and that they are much less susceptible to human error.

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Data protection expert Tim Rhodes has helped hundreds of companies protect their most valuable asset online. Visit http://www.webargos.com/exclusive

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