It’s easy to imagine that cyberthreats are always digital in nature, like a virus infecting your IT systems or a brute force attack infiltrating your CEO’s email account. But it’s also possible for criminals to visit your Vancouver office and destroy your physical servers or steal flash drives containing sensitive data backups. For this reason, your cybersecurity strategy must include measures to physically secure your company’s data assets and IT systems.
A key element of physical IT security is visitor management, a process that keeps track of your guests, their activities, and their whereabouts within your company’s premises. This process could be as simple as getting the visitor’s name or as meticulous as registering them to a database and assigning an employee escort.
However, threats aren’t always external. Insider threats are security risks from within your organization and may include partners, vendors, and both current and past employees. They can be more dangerous than third-party threats because they usually know what your assets are, where these are kept, and how these are secured. Therefore, you should pay as close attention to members of your organization as you do to visitors.
Follow these tips to maximize the physical security of your IT assets:
Keep all doors and drawers locked
The best way to discourage would-be information thieves is to prevent them from entering restricted areas and keeping data and storage media out of their sight. To those ends, always keep doors to restricted areas locked. This also goes for drawers and cabinets that contain important documents, data backups, and portable work devices.
Prevent tailgating and piggybacking
Tailgating is the act of accessing a restricted area by closely following an authorized personnel, letting that person unlock the entrance, and entering while the entrance is unlocked. Piggybacking, on the other hand, is a social engineering tactic in which an unauthorized person tricks your personnel into giving them access to a restricted space. Visitors and unauthorized employees may use these tactics to enter your company’s server rooms, for instance, and damage crucial hardware.
Instruct your staff to always be conscious of their surroundings whenever they enter restricted areas to ensure that no one will sneak in with them. Remind them of the dangers that unauthorized parties pose to your business and enforce penalties for anyone who neglects to do their part in preventing these activities.
Place work devices in secure locations
Portable work devices, such as laptops and smartphones, are very easy for criminals to steal. Therefore, it’s important that you carry them at all times, especially when you’re working out of the office, and never leave them in easily accessible locations. For instance, if you’re leaving your work devices in your car, make sure they’re safely stored inside the trunk. Criminals can go as far as to break your car windows just to get your laptop or mobile phone.
Lock work devices when not being used
Encourage your employees to lock their devices whenever they are away from their desks. Otherwise, someone could simply go to an unmanned but active device and steal sensitive business data. Needless to say, all devices should be locked using strong passwords, PINs, or fingerprint or facial scans.
Use a mobile device management (MDM) system
Any business whose employees use mobile devices for work should consider investing in MDM. This technology does several things that are crucial to the physical security of mobile devices. For one, it enables you to remotely lock devices and track their location in case they’re lost or stolen. Should physical recovery be difficult or impossible, you can use MDM to remotely wipe business information stored in the mobile device.
Physical and digital security should go hand in hand if you want to maximize the security of your business and its data. Our experts at Quicktech can help you identify flaws in your cybersecurity strategy and recommend effective measures to address these weaknesses. Learn which solutions your business needs to enhance its cybersecurity by downloading this free eBook today.