Riverbank It management

Since April this year the Information  Commissioner's Office (ICO) has had real teeth. It now has the power to fine companies up to £500,000 for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act.

Common breaches of the Data Protection Act include:

• Loss of laptops, disks and data sticks containing client data.
• Insecure transmission of personal information.

Simple steps that you can take:

• Make sure that all company laptops have full disk encryption (remember that password protection does not equal encryption).
• Staff have fully-encrypted data sticks to move data around.
• Your staff know how to encrypt data files that they send via e-mail.
• Staff training includes awareness of data security.
• Consider implementing e-mail encryption. This can be full-automatic and invisible to your users.

Clearly the measures you take have to be proportionate to the risk. But it's got to be worth spending a few minutes reviewing your data security to make sure you are on the right side of the law. And if you need any help with the technical aspects of your data security just call Riverbank.