Those with Intellectual Property to protect such as product names, logos, packaging designs, bespoke products etc. will need policies in place to follow, such as how to register a trademark, where to fill out a patent or who to register a domain name with.

Organisations also need to think aboutwhere information is stored in order to prevent data loss. Paper documentsleft or desks or filed in unlocked cabinets pose a huge risk.  Likewise, employee information such as bank details and medical information saved in network folders could be accessible to other employees with prying eyes. 

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While many office applications such asOffice 365, OneDrive and SharePointoffer great levels of convenience and flexibility, they can also providevery easy ways of getting data out of an organisation. 

88% of data breaches are caused by human error and with up to 90% of the data in Office 365 being unstructured, there are significant risk mitigation challenges for IT teams as well as an increased risk of data loss. 

In OneDrive for example, if a user accidently deletes a file it can be difficult or in some cases impossible to get it back.  Additionally, if an employee with access to these applications leaves, how do you stop them downloading information once they've gone?

Organisation's should look toadopt software solutions that come with Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilitiesthat work across emails, as well as files uploaded and changed within Cloud storage apps. 

Document management software is often the solution for many businesses when looking to prevent data loss as built insecurity featuressuch as rights based permission, encryption and back ups come as standard. 

Providing protection from unauthorised access while enabling employees to carry out everyday tasks means there needs to bevarious levels of authorisation.

The IT Manager shouldn't be able to see sensitive HR documents and a new member of staff shouldn't have editing rights to legal documents such as invoices or contracts.

Whatever the requirement, any chosendocument management softwareneeds to have a well defined rights system for accessing and editing documents across different roles within the business.  It should also show what documents have been viewed and edited, by who and when.

To go even further, some systems will allow access to be controlled on individual documents, and for very sensitive data, a high security mode is used wheredocuments are encrypted furtherso they can't even be accessed by a systems administrator. 

When it comes to preventing data loss it'sessential to have a back up of documentsto protect against any fire or flood damage.  And while back ups are so important, sometimes they may not be enough.  What about how your documents are organised too? 

Any database used, along withindex criteriaalso need to be backed up.  Saving the document itself is one thing, but being left with a mass of documents that are no longer categorised means there's no easy way of finding information.

When implementing document management software it makes sense to use a solution that stores index criteria in a separate database from the documents themselves. This allows basic backup solutions for both documents and databases.

Theprevention of data loss needs to be a priority for all organisations no matter what the sizeto ensurecompliancewith government and industry regulations.  Can your organisation guarantee information safety alongside traceability of what information has been accessed and when? 

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