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Risky Business for Your Business
w.08.2007
Risky Business for Your Business
You are a small business owner and you wear 10 different hats. You are smart, and
take advantage of commoditized products and services for some aspects of your business.
This is a list of some of the dangers that may not be readily apparent when using commoditized products and services.
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Computer Repair & Support
It is a common need for a small business to need help with hardware and software issues, that frequently need
a specialist to be called in. One might be tempted to call up a national electronic retailer who provides
inexpensive tech help. While the spirit of this type of business is great, we believe it can also be dangerous.
Any large national chain needs workers in the thousands. These people are usually hired in the normal fashion
that retail employment is setup for, application & interview. While these are two valid ways to narrows tens of
thousands down to thousands, it does nothing for selection of people's moral cores or trustworthiness. You'd
have to agree that as with any large retailer hiring thousands of employees, a percentage of these employees
will inevitably be without a sound base. You'd have to agree that at least some percentage would have to be
criminals, if not in the past, but are willing to take advantage of others. When someone says, "That national
retailer is good" they of course are not speaking of the individual who will have access to all your sensitive
information, they are only referring to the national retailer as a whole. Whether you know it or not, if you've
had you computer for any length of time, there is almost without a doubt information that can make you vulnerable
to identity theft, blackmail, or simply outright theft. Usernames, passwords, account numbers and business
information are just a few things that in some way or another people usually manage to leave in old files, or even deleted files that are still accessible.
Now don't get me wrong, these national retailers do employ a good percentage of great people. I also am not
saying this because I want you to choose us to fix your computers, because quite frankly, we don't want to
fix your computers. There is no money in that. The point I am trying to get across is it is infinitely better to find a
trusted source of support, and ask them about minimizing your exposure to outside people in the event of need. For example,
enacting company wide encrypted storage for all sensitive information is not all that expensive. Getting network attached
storage and having your staff store everything centrally can limit your exposure as well. Finally, for day to day
software issues find a source for help and stick with them. Having random help sent from large retailers is like
playing roulette. It only take a few seconds for one of them to put in a thumb drive and plant a root kit on just one
of your PC's, and they have you. The more wise criminals do not "take down" your network, that'd be too obvious,
they rather quietly wait and partake in your information over the course of months.
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Document Disintegration
Every year we take on new documents to store as per legal requirements.
However, that usually means we are then able to rid ourselves of the
previous older documents in storage. Shredding boxes and boxes full of
sensitive paper can be a strain on a small business since most prosumer
shredders, even the higher end items, can only shred continuously for a
couple minutes.
Enter the solutions. You can hire a company to drive a big truck to your
location and shred everything onsite. It is very secure, but also expensive,
and usually for large volume businesses. You can also take your old
documents to a shredding service, it is less expensive, however comes with
caveats.
Gish Network, building on it's existing trust network, offers secure
document disintegration. We have an industrial disintegrator that can
disintegrate documents to DOD level security. You may not have the need to
disintegrate, perhaps merely shred, but consider this: In the time between
handing the box to the retail worker, and the time it actually gets
shredded, there is time for mischief. So, in the end, such documentation
should be handled by a trusted partner.
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