Methods And Means Of Protecting Information: Trade Secrets And Personal Data

Almost every company has sensitive information: confidential data, a customer and employee base. This information can be protected in different ways, such as restricting access to it, encrypting messages, and locking servers with data.

Let’s look at different methods and specific means of protecting information that is now most often used.

How Can You Protect Corporate Information?

There are two main ways to protect information:

Establish clear rules and regulations for working with information and assign penalties for violating them. Such protection measures explain what can and cannot be done with information, how and from whom it needs to be protected, and the dangers of unauthorized access to data.

These measures are the first line of defense. They will stop those who are not ready to ignore the rules, break laws, and be punished for the sake of information.

Protect information from unauthorized access using technical tools: hardware or special software. These are means of protecting confidential information aimed against:

• Those who try to break the rules and laws;
• Those who may accidentally delete or damage important information or disclose sensitive information,
• For example, due to the inability to manage access to information, It is easier to prohibit or limit unwanted actions than to monitor every step of employees who may not be aware of all the intricacies of information security.

Such tools protect the information itself – they do not allow you to access it, read the data, change it, or damage it.

Let’s look at different types of information protection in more detail.

Also Read: Antivirus Information Protection

Non-Technical Methods Of Protection: Legal And Organizational

Legal methods of information protection. Laws related to information that the state establishes and is obliged to comply with. For example, in Russia, such legal methods include 152-FZ, which sets the rules for working with personal data, or Article 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which describes liability for unlawful access to information.

Legal methods do not protect information by themselves—the law will not prevent an attacker from hacking a server. However, it establishes the punishment that the attacker will suffer for this, which means it will protect confidential information from those who do not want to pay a fine or go to prison.

Organizational methods of information protection. These are the methods taken by the one who stores the information. This usually includes working with employees and internal company regulations:

1. Selection of reliable and responsible employees
2. They are drawing up and signing non-disclosure agreements.
3. Differentiation of access levels for employees so that certain information is available only to a narrow circle of people

Organizational means of protecting information are almost the same as legal ones; only the rules for working with data are set not by the country but by an individual company.

However, more than legal and organizational measures are needed -information can still be damaged due to system failures or stolen by those who ignore the law and company rules. Therefore, there are four types of technical means of information protection: physical, hardware, software, and cryptographic.

Also Read: Types And Types Of DDoS Protection