To protect our companies’ information, we must maintain its confidentiality, availability, and integrity. Security policies must be created that include both the preventive measures and the actions to be taken to protect it and the media where it is stored, throughout its life cycle, from its creation to its destruction. In this way, we will avoid theft, manipulation, and leaks of information.
New technologies have made it possible for us to manage better and make the information profitable for the development of our business. Still, it has also increased exposure to new threats, making it easier to leak confidential information, either by internal agents (oversights, employees disgruntled, etc.) or external (malware attacks or cybercriminal intrusions).
For this reason, the information use policies must contemplate both protection against physical risks such as fire, floods, etc., as well as the risks derived from the systems where the information is stored and manipulated (malware, industrial espionage, intrusion into the strategies, etc.)
Although security measures must be adapted to the specific characteristics of each company, there are a series of basic steps that must be applied regardless of their size or activity.
Information access control
Apply the principle of least privilege, allowing access to information only to those employees who need it—establishing who can access each type of information. These measures must be reviewed and updated periodically to update the permissions as necessary or eliminate the user profiles of employees who no longer belong to the company. Also, this information must be safely destroyed once it reaches the end of its useful life.
Hiring forensic accountant
What is a forensic accountant? These professionals often analyze, interpret, and summarize complex business and financial issues.CFO Share’s forensic accounting service is typically employed in the following industries:
- Bank
- Government agency
- Insurance company
- police
- Certified accountant
These professionals create computer applications to collect financial evidence and manage all the information collected. Then present the findings as a presentation or report.
Have Your Books Been Comprimised?
The applications and systems used must be correctly updated to their latest versions and with all the security patches distributed by the manufacturers. These updates must be made periodically and can be scheduled to be carried out at times that do not interfere with the company’s professional activity.
Backups
Regular backups of relevant business data and applications are essential, keeping them in a safe place away from the original data source. Just as important as making a good backup is to make sure that it works correctly and we can restore it without problems, if necessary.
Information encryption
Confidentiality and unwanted access to information can be protected by encrypting it, the media that stores it, and the communications where we transmit it. The forensic accountant preserves all information only for the company and lowers the risk of leaks of confidential information.
Have Your Books Been Compromised?
Another advantage of conducting forensic audits within companies is the integration of preventive, detective, and corrective anti-fraud controls, strengthening the administration. But you have to be very careful when designing them. Since they must be intelligent and not tie up the company’s operation as sometimes happens because we often find comments such as “What happened is that now it seems that we are working for the controls.
