Sensible Security Measures for Your Business
August 8, 2008 - An entrepreneur friend of mine has recently had a number of problems in his office in China. Most of them only came to light when his girlfriend began working in the office, and discovering the myriad scams his employees were running (he doesn’t speak or read Chinese). Among the more serious problems uncovered so far, there were incidents of document theft and diverting clients to employees’ friends (in exchange for kickbacks). Several days ago, my friend banished all of his office workers into the factory where there are no landlines. He noted that the telephone calls to the office immediately dropped off. The significance of that observation is that he’s in startup mode and has few clients. Moreover, he hasn’t been buying from that many suppliers. He wonders what all of the phone calls were really about.
More importantly, he had a helpful conversation with a Chinese supplier yesterday. She’s Chinese, and each time one of her employees sends an email, it comes from a central email account and reads at the bottom that the email was “sent on behalf of [the owner]”. My friend, impressed with her lack of trust in her employees, asked her about this and her other security measures. These are the major security precautions she takes:
- No employee has his / her own email account. All emails go through the central account, meaning that she can view them.
- She prohibits employees from bringing personal computers to the office.
- She does not give laptops to her employees – only desktops.
- She has software monitoring all internet communications through her network – she can therefore track instant messenger traffic.
- Employees may not use mobile phones in the office at all – even for SMS.
- All documents are stored on the server, with all accesses logged.
These measures may strike some as draconian, but personally I think she’s very smart to have these levels of security. I recommend that all businesses consider implementing at least some of the above.
