A new year represents new beginnings for every business and of course, new growth opportunities. It’s important for every organization to prepare for whatever may come their way in 2015; along with budget and marketing plans for the New Year, now is the perfect opportunity to remind your customers on the importance of their information security. Where do you start? Suggest that they reevaluate the status of their current internal security processes, allowing them to determine where their information management can be improved.
While many of our customers have the right goals in place when building their business and trying to increase overall profits, there can be times when distractions might leave a little to be desired when it comes to security. Unfortunately, when security isn’t a priority, small problems can turn into big disasters.
If your customer is constantly putting out fires and fighting organizational problems that could have been prevented, perhaps this is an opportunity to educate and familiarize them with ideas that could protect the most critical assets of their business. While your customers may be under the impression that this is a complex task they don’t have time for, this clearly isn’t the case. In fact, with a few simple processes in place, management, employees, and clients, can have peace of mind in knowing their proactive behavior will contribute to a secure and successful 2015!
Consider sharing these New Year’s security tips with your clients, and watch as your business and reputation in the industry improves:
- Companies should establish clear information security policies and procedures.
- Ideally, one individual should be responsible for overseeing all information security.
- On-going training needs to be provided to employees, so all staff understand the details of each policy/procedure.
- Make document management and storage easy. Businesses should use lockable collection containers to securely store all confidential information in, prior to disposal.
- Encourage your clients to label all documents by storage and destruction dates so there is no confusion as to what should and shouldn’t be destroyed.
- Stress the benefit of introducing a shred-all policy, so that all documents are securely destroyed when being disposed of – this means removing an unnecessary job from your customers, freeing up more of their valuable time….not to mention more shredding business for you!
- For their security, you may wish to suggest that they periodically and regularly run background checks on employees handling customer information.
- Remind them about their electronic waste. You know that degaussing a hard drive isn’t enough to protect them from potential threats. Explain to them how easy hard drive destruction is, and why it’s in their best interest to safely rid of these, along with their sensitive documents.
While the most common New Year’s Resolutions for businesses point towards setting goals, improving their marketing efforts, and improving their bottom line, remember to communicate to your customers that without internal security measures in place, these resolutions may be all for not. Your clients must first take the necessary steps towards protecting their life and blood; critical business data. It’s the perfect opportunity to promote the various solutions your shredding company provides and why your services will help to keep them organized, secure, and compliant in 2015.
Wishing you all the best for the year ahead, and Happy Holidays!