NATION Technologies

With ever-increasing security and compliance concerns it is necessary for you to take proactive measures to limit your liability and ensure the protection of your client’s sensitive information.  Identifying how best to adhere to these security and compliance standards starts with recognizing your current measures to secure your client’s sensitive information. 

For the sake of this article a document can be any word processing file, a spreadsheet, a PDF file, a graphic image or any other computer generated electronic format.

1)     Do your clients know, without a doubt, that their sensitive information contained in a document is protected?

2)     Do you know who has opened the document that you are sending to your clients or even if it has been opened? 

3)     Can you be sure that the document you are viewing is the latest authoritative version?

If you answered ‘NO’ to any of these questions, continue reading to learn about you can hold your clients affairs to the strictest confidence using document encryption. 

In many industries (especially banking, healthcare and insurance), information security measures and client confidentiality is paramount.  You need to be able to prove, without a doubt, that a client’s document containing sensitive information is the unaltered authoritative version.  To ensure that your strategy for client confidentiality remains unchallenged you should explore adding document encryption to your security measures.

Implementing document encryption can be a cost-effective solution that does not require a great deal of technical expertise.  If you know how to select and save a document you can start realizing the benefits immediately.

There is a common misconception circulating that securing or encrypting an email protects the attached document.  While email encryption is part of the solution the attached document containing your client’s sensitive information remains unprotected.  To further strengthen your security measures the attached document must be encrypted.  This added solution effectively provides your clients with the assurance that their information is protected and accounted for.

With document encryption solutions you are not limited to email delivery, as these secure documents can be delivered via any electronic means such as CD, flash drive, etc..  Providing flexibility and confidence that your information is protected however you may choose to deliver the document.

When evaluating document encryption solutions you should consider if the solution has auditing capabilities to track who views your documents.  An auditing feature serves to not only protect your clients but will serve as a powerful management resource.  Auditing allows you to track, in real-time, the status of an encrypted document including who has viewed the document, date and time stamp of viewing or if the document has been viewed at all. 

With advances in document encryption technology, businesses are transitioning from paper to paperless offices in an effort to save time, money and address compliance standards.  This catalyst to move to a paperless office will effectively provide you and your company with:

·         Improved controls to satisfy privacy laws.

·         Visibility to easily audit and track your documents, whether they are created as in-house documents or as documents that you send externally to your clients or vendors.  

·         Reduce your costs for paper and expensive records storage.

It is a requirement that you demonstrate appropriate measures to protect client information.  In fact, recent requirements such as the Red Flag Rules were developed to protect your client’s sensitive information in an effort to prevent identity theft.  The Red Flag Rules are scheduled to be enforced on June 1, 2010.  Will you be ready?