The problem that a lot of Australian entrepreneurs have with office security lies in the fact that the term itself is quite unclear. After all, what does workplace security mean? In the IoT world, it’s impossible to separate physical from cybersecurity but there’s the type of threat to consider, as well. Is it the safety of the information, the security of your employees from natural disasters, the safety of your visitors or something else? In reality, it’s all of these things combined. With that in mind and without further ado, here are several useful tips you can use to improve office security.
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Think about BYOD
The concept of bringing your own device (BYOD) implies that your employees are using their private devices for work and bringing them to the office. This is practical and frugal, seeing as how your staff gets to work on devices that they’re familiar with and you don’t have to pay for them. Moreover, off-spot working is a lot easier this way. In fact, the majority of your employees are already doing this to a degree (their personal smartphones). The problem with this, however, lies in the fact that it’s a liability when it comes to your security model. This is why there are some safety considerations you should make. There are resources for information security policies that you can use to set boundaries.
2. Strong password policy
The next thing you should understand is the fact that a lot of people use passwords that are too simple to crack, due to the fact that they’re easy to memorize. You can’t forget your pet’s name or your child’s birthday, however, these are both information that a malicious third-party can easily come by. This is why one of your first steps to improve office security needs to be enforcing a strong password policy and requesting that your employees change their passwords on a regular basis. Other than this, there’s the issue of phishing, which is a real and imminent threat that you need to raise awareness of.
3. Multiple-step authorization
Because of all the above-listed, it might be for the best to introduce a multiple-step authorization for both your staff and your website visitors. By adding a security question, you’ll already make a huge step forward. Also, nowadays the field of biometrics is experiencing a massive rise, which means that you might be able to use it better in the future. Benefits of this method are indeed great and it’s incredibly easy to implement it with the right help.
4. Visitor system
Other than this, you need a strong visitor system, seeing as how the last thing you want is for someone from the outside to snoop around your premises or get injured while visiting your place of work. First of all, they should never wander the site unsupervised. In order to be easier to spot, they should be wearing safety vests at all times. It’s also a good idea for all your employees to have authorization ID cards, while these visitors might have to wear labels on those vests. Therefore, investing in a labeller would be a great idea.
5. Monitoring and alarm system
In order to make your place feel really safe, you need to have a monitoring system. You also need these recordings so that you can do some diagnostics, later on, and check what’s going on. Aside from this, you also need a reliable alarm system that alerts authorities as soon as an unauthorized entry to your office space is recognized. With the help of experts like Protection Revolution Australia, this will be incredibly easy to install, maintain and supervise.
6. Employee theft management
The issue of employee theft is something quite serious and it’s something that you need to pay attention to. There are several ways to handle this but two of them come to the forefront. First of all, you need to organize your employees into a pair system. This will prevent them from taking sensitive data home, make it harder for them to steal office supplies and even lower the likelihood of a mistake. Second, you need to conduct a regular inventory. This way, if there’s a problem you’ll notice it a lot sooner.
7. Have an emergency plan
One more way to increase your office safety is to try and prepare for an emergency. First of all, you need to prepare for regional disasters. If your area is known for floods, hurricanes or something similar, you might want to have a contingency plan at play. Fire, on the other hand, is something that could happen in any office in the world, which is why you need to have all the necessary equipment, functional escape routes and drill your staff as often as you can. Finally, in today’s world, even a terrorist threat or a hostage situation needs to be taken into consideration.
8. Storage room security
Finally, if you have a storage room you need to make sure that it’s monitored. All the cabinets inside need to be locked and, at the entrance, you need to have a ledger that each person must sign before entering. Ideally, you would have one camera installed there so that you can check previous activity if the need arises. Having limited access to this room is also a method that you might want to consider.
In conclusion
In the end, the issue of office security isn’t something that’s so easy to tackle, after all. Why? Well, because there are so many things that count as a security or a potential security threat. By leaving just one of these issues as a threat, you won’t be able to consider your office as secure. This is why it’s so important that you take a more holistic approach and, when talking about security, try to tackle all of the above-listed issues at the same time.
