Globalization, of course, has a huge number of advantages, but with the development of technology and the almost complete disappearance of borders, a new problem has arisen - how to protect the information of your enterprise. After all, no one has canceled the rule: "Whoever owns the information, owns the world." Indeed, if you know a lot of information about your competitor, then you have advantages. Therefore, today, many businessmen are faced with the question of how to ensure corporate security. Indeed, sometimes it is necessary to carry out its activities in rather extreme conditions, fighting for each client, while preserving its resource and managerial potential.
General Provisions
Corporate security is a whole range of measures aimed at protecting the economic, technical, legal, informational interests of a particular enterprise. All these measures are implemented with the aim of effectively monitoring all business processes and preventing information leakage that could adversely affect the interests of the business entity.
Information security issues are faced by any enterprise, regardless of ownership, legal form and type of activity, size of the enterprise.
Corporate and economic interests
The concept of "corporate security" in recent years has changed slightly compared to the 90s. Then attention was focused on the personal safety of the owner of the business and property. This was due to the huge criminalization in the country, in those days it was possible to protect oneself from crime only with the help of physical security and technical means. Then the “institute” of bodyguards appears, because protection was necessary for almost every businessman.
Over time, the state began to more or less deal with the regulation of economic processes in the country, and security problems flowed into the plane of the economy. Then almost all enterprises worked with huge violations, because taxation was exorbitant. As a result, multiple schemes appeared, which allowed to divert money into the shadows. And the threat began to bear the regulatory authorities. In most cases, a refund was made by force. Then the concept of economic security appeared. Special departments were created at the enterprises, whose employees were no longer engaged in physical security, but protected information of an economic nature. As a result, the retired law enforcement officers began to settle in such departments or organize their own enterprises providing economic security services. Although in fact they resembled the structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB, which simply solved the issues of their employers.
In recent years, this practice has gone into oblivion. But the development of market relations creates new problems. Now the businessman faces new challenges. Now your "brainchild" must be protected from absorption, the machinations of competitors. And this is a threat not only to the owner, but also to the economic stability of the whole country (monopolization of individual industries, unemployment and a decrease in budget revenues).
Potential threats
Almost any entrepreneur will say that business security is, above all, protection from competitors. In fact, competition is a natural and even somewhat beneficial process. It gives an incentive to the development of the enterprise.
Types of competition
To date, there are three types of competition:
- “White”, that is, conscientious, conducted openly and within the framework of regulatory documents.
- "Gray", aimed at discrediting the company, using techniques prohibited by applicable law.
- "Black". This is actually a confrontation, the purpose of which is to destroy a competitor.
In the light of this classification, two types of threat are distinguished: hostile takeover and industrial espionage.
Another threat to business security is corruption in regulatory and inspection bodies. Unscrupulous employees of such bodies extort bribes, even if the company has no violations, that is, such practice is considered normal. In addition, bribe takers can act as a tool in unfair competition.
A criminality today is relegated to the forefront, the threat of organized crime is virtually a thing of the past.
There is also the so-called targeted threat, that is, when employees of an enterprise commit obviously wrong actions that pose a direct threat to business. It can also be a theft or hacking of a computer system, selling classified information.
Where to begin?
The corporate security system should begin by defining a range of threats - both temporary and permanent, and as a whole consists of several subsystems, namely:
- information security;
- personnel security;
- technical;
- legal;
- economic and others.
It is recommended to start with choosing a person who will be responsible for the security system, or creating a department. In addition, you can attract a specialized company on the terms of outsourcing.
Already a person who will be directly involved in the construction of the system is obliged to determine the degree of information security and access to it. Then, methods for protecting information resources are determined, which are divided into open and closed.
Human Resources
The concept of economic security includes not only theft at the lowest level, for example, the theft of some spare parts or paper, but also negligence on the part of workers. There are times when employees commit misconduct due to simple ignorance or negligence, transmit confidential information about the company where they work, to a third party or competitors.
Therefore, it is very important that all employees know about corporate security at the enterprise, and not only know, but also understand the degree of personal responsibility. This even applies to the opening of phishing emails, which in reality can pose a potential threat to the entire enterprise. Negligence can even manifest itself in the fact that the employee can send an important letter to the wrong address.
Other cases of information leakage
It should be understood that corporate information security should concern not only ordinary employees. As practice shows, even among the founders there are so-called "rats". Such people, as a rule, have free access to any information, but other co-owners are completely immune from the fact that one of them is playing a double game and is an insider.
Among the insiders, there are middle managers, top managers. These people are also able to act for selfish purposes, but they can simply neglect security. But still, most often they are playing a double game, hired managers use their privileges and abuse the access to confidential information of the organization.
And, as mentioned earlier, ordinary, ordinary employees can steal valuable information in order to get profit for its disclosure. But this happens quite rarely, most often the leak occurs against the background of negligence and negligence. Although, probably, many entrepreneurs were faced with a situation where a departed employee settles in with competitors and lures all the customers that the company has acquired, that is, it actually steals the customer base.
Basic protection methods
What can the economic security department do? First of all, the enterprise should have controlled access to the territory. It does not matter whether it is physical control or special software with the issuance of a card, the main thing is that the system works, and unauthorized persons have limited access to the territory.
Secondly, if the enterprise has many departments, then you can organize a system with access to specific departments with HID cards. Simply put, only the person who has permission can enter a specific unit.
Protection of information
Corporate security in terms of protecting information stored on virtual media consists of the following measures:
- installation of software that will control the transfer of data from each computer in the enterprise;
- BIOS lock to prevent any changes to the system;
- shutdown of optical drives;
- refusal of pirated versions of office programs and use only licensed software.
Today, there are many programs that allow you to track the actions of employees on computers. In particular, the programs even allow you to determine the date of arrival and departure of the employee, the period of absence from the workplace. And most importantly, to which sites the transitions from a particular workstation were carried out, what information was viewed and in which programs the employee worked.
The security of corporate networks also consists in installing anti-virus programs, systems that will allow you to filter out junk mail and remove it from the corporate mailbox.
Do not forget about the organization of differential access, as well as system password change. It is also recommended to organize a system that allows you to backup files. That is, information should not be stored exclusively on computers, it should be duplicated on a server or other external media. Such measures can protect data not only from theft, but also from unforeseen situations, for example, in the case of seizure of computer equipment by law enforcement agencies.
Corporate communication on the Internet should be encrypted; it is recommended to use the end-to-end protection protocol. This format and other encryption allow you to confirm the authenticity of the transmitted document and protect the information contained in it.
Unfriendly Takeover Protection
The responsibilities of the economic security department should also include takeover protection. In particular, employees of the unit are required to:
- Track the acquisition of company shares. If we are talking about a joint stock company, then buying up a large number of shares should cause concern, for a closed joint stock company and LLC even 1 share is of great importance.
- Monitoring the domestic market. Absorption can be not only due to the fact that they want to remove a certain company from the market, but also against the background of the fact that the company may have attractive real estate or other valuable property.
- Monitor unmotivated document requests. They can be received via corporate communications, mail, via the Internet. But this is not important, it is dangerous if a minority shareholder requests information. A request from a shareholder who has 1 or 2 shares, and he does not even take part in the vote, should also cause suspicion. It is necessary to track unmotivated requests from regulatory and law enforcement agencies, as unfriendly companies can operate through such employees.
- Careful control of accounts payable. There are frequent cases when the seizure of assets occurred precisely because of the accumulation of debts in the same hands.
Finally
Work to protect enterprise information should be carried out on an ongoing basis, and it is better to entrust this matter to professionals.