Most businesses realize that document security is important for safeguarding confidential and sensitive information, but what happens if poor security results in a data breach?

Realizing that a potential data breach is prevalent and working together to understand it as clearly as possible requires efforts from across the organization. With input from all levels starting from first responders to executive teams, it is crucial to get viewpoints and actionable methods to move forward.

While some organizations that have suffered a data breach may find it difficult to verify the legitimacy of customers, they also need to comprehend the possible impact of the incident thoroughly. In many cases it is seen that frontline staff members although may notice key suspicious activities such as a vulnerability or a gap in procedures, they do not realize the potential of such a loophole in bringing catastrophe on the company. And understandably so, without management or executive level review, it can become challenging for frontline staff to report or escalate the matter.

Image source

For frontline responders to recognize an issue such as a likely data breach, companies must first need to develop procedures and provide requisite tools and instruction to assist the staff in identifying the manifestations of a data breach.

In a particular incident, when a whistle-blower within the breached organization alerted law enforcement, the executives of the company were still in the dark. That meant that even though law enforcement agencies began to carry out litigation against the breached company, the Board of Directors and management were going about their days conducting business as usual. This revealed that the administration was not involved in the first few months of the data breach response. Unfortunately, the first few weeks are crucial, especially when the data breach crisis is building because this is the time organizations must take to strategize, gather data, or take necessary action at the boardroom level. In such a case, since the extent of the issue blindsided the management, they were compelled to make crucial decisions under massive pressure.

By involving the executive team immediately of the suspected breach, the company may well have been in a strong position. Unlike every other tragedy, both big and small, that we see around us, most of them could have been prevented or reduced if frontline responders inform the right person at the right time to make a sound decision. This is where it has been seen that the escalation path is usually more problematic than it appears. When companies conduct mock exercises or drills, they find that the incident response team’s understanding of escalation is different from the expectations of senior executives—equally challenging are characterizations and severity level designations. For instance, the board members of your company might expect to know about the suspected data breach at an early phase. But on the other hand, the IT department may be trained to wait and escalate only if there is substantial proof that a data breach has taken place.

This shows that it is crucial to involve every staff member at every level within the company in the planning process of a data breach and conduct mock drill exercises to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Implementing a robust document security solution can be the first and most critical step in securing your company’s confidential data. Companies dealing with sensitive information should know that investing significant resources in a company-specific, enterprise-grade application-layer solution, designed to protect any device the company uses is imperative. With big data, mobile devices and the internet of things becoming increasingly pervasive in our daily lives, securing your confidential documents can be crucial to safeguarding your usiness. Accessing secure emails, remote services, and mobile apps—much less performing sensitive applications like payroll and accounting—requires top-of-the-line encryption and authentication.

Compromising the enterprise’s information security measures can have a severe impact on company operations. Sensitive business documents can be lost, stolen, destroyed, altered, or misused, putting your organization at risk. For example, malicious hackers could interrupt a company’s data transmissions or siphon off confidential data. They could also exhaust the company’s account reserves, slowing or even halting the flow of payment. Such a disruption can put employers and their relationships at risk.

A well-built and proven document security application can improve your service delivery, keep your documents safe, and save you money on training. Better yet, the application can make your current and future data a whole lot safer. If your business stores confidential and sensitive information in PDF files, then PDF DRM is a good way to protect documents from unauthorized access, sharing and misuse.

PDF DRM makes it easy to securely protect information on your company’s network with its full set of security functionality designed to enforce how documents can be used.  For example, you can restrict PDF editing, copying, sharing, printing and block screenshots.  You can dynamically watermark PDFs with user identifiable information, and automatically expire PDF files after a certain period of time or use.  PDFs can be tracked and revoked at any time.

Performing an audit of your data and its storage can help you to improve the security posture of your documents and make it easier for the security team to see if access to the data is possible from a malicious or compromised end-user. And because document security matters, PDF DRM as a full-fledged document security solution can play a crucial role in the fight against cyber threats, leaks, and document piracy.