How to Safeguard Your Company’s and Employees’ Information

Your primary responsibility as an employer is to secure your company's and employees' privacy. This means you need to keep and preserve private information regarding your workers and your company. To achieve this goal, you should ensure that no employee information leaks to unauthorized personnel without your permission. Doing so will also help protect the most valuable and confidential information about your company. Failure to do so may cause your company to suffer from the loss of very sensitive corporate information. 

What if Your Company Data Breach Occurs?

The worst that can happen to your company is to allow a data breach to occur. If this happens, don't rush to turn on your employees' computer in a bid to find out the problem. The moment you turn on the computer you will most likely tamper with the vital evidence. This is where a computer forensic expert comes in to save the situation.

The Need for a Computer Forensics Expert

Most likely, the IT department within your company is not conversant with computer forensics. So allowing your IT staff to perform routine cybersecurity checks in different system's files can interfere with the potential evidence regarding a data breach. That's why you should look for knowledgeable and experienced computer forensics professional to handle every sensitive data of your company. 

But the question is, how do you approach this problem?

Reboot Your Computer

Instead of turning on the affected computer, you can just reboot it to avoid overwriting sensitive files. Such files could be having the evidence you are looking for to make your case valid. Never use compromised IT devices unless you have prior knowledge about computer forensics. Instead, keep them safe to be handled by a trusted computer forensics expert.

Turn off the Affected Computer

Apart from rebooting the affected computer, turn it off as soon as possible to preserve data breach evidence and to protect other files. While turning off this particular computer, make sure to power it down in a manner not to damage potential evidence further. In this case, allow only a certified computer forensic expert to perform this delicate task.

Don't Browse Through Your Computer

No matter how tempting it is to know where the problem lies, never try to browse through any file on your computer. This act of snooping may escalate the problem and even prevent you from retrieving untainted evidence. The browsing can alter file times, making it extremely difficult to know the exact time certain data was copied or deleted from your company's database.

Include All Parties

Make sure to involve all relevant parties in the case. The parties may include your IT staff, every business player, and in-house counsel whose task is to represent or assist employees in legal matters. All these people should be there to witness everything that pertains to conducting electronic discovery. If you fail to involve the aforementioned parties, you may risk losing your most important data.

Get Familiar with IT Lingo

As you may know, there are ever-expanding vocabularies commonly used by most computer forensics experts. Such vocabularies can even sound strange to your team of tech-savvy support professionals. Therefore, it is prudent to familiarize yourself with this IT lingo in order to stay abreast with the changing world of computers.

Don't Duplicate Your Computer's Hard Drive

Making a duplicate of your computer's hard disc is also known as imaging or making a forensic image of the affected computer. The main idea behind imaging is to copy data from one hard drive to another without the risks of obtaining flawed data or overlooking some data.  While this process will help you create an accurate duplicate of your original materials, it may also destroy data breach evidence.

Copy Data Using "Cut and Paste" Method or "Drag and Drop" Technique

You can easily copy data from the affected computer using either the "Cut and Paste" Method or the "Drag and Drop" technique. All you need is an $80 external USB hard disc that has adequate space to accommodate enough data. Sadly, this process doesn't retrieve the unallocated files. Also, it is likely to change all file times including other data that may have been copied out during the breaching.

Preserve the Evidence as Soon as Possible

If you realize that your company data has been compromised, you should take drastic measures immediately. Failure to act quickly may alter or overwrite some files permanently. On that note, ensure that you always preserve any electronic data to prevent further damage to the files.

Document Every Access to Electronic Evidence

You should always document everyone who had previously accessed the electronic evidence following the alleged incident. Taking this matter seriously will help to avoid problems during the collection of evidence. At the same time, documenting will minimize blame games from the opposing parties, making your data collection evidence smooth and timeless.

To Wrap Up

It is essential to safeguard your employee information in the same way you should do for your corporate data. Taking this noble step will serve the purposes of litigation in addition to preserving and preventing data loss. Take into account the tips provided above and you will never go wrong when it comes to protecting information within your company.