Three crucial tips to protect data privacy

Three Crucial Tips to Protect Data Privacy

As any data entry service provider knows, data privacy is of utmost importance when handling sensitive data. Here are 3 ways to ensure data protection.

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As any data entry service provider knows, data privacy is of utmost importance when handling sensitive data. Data protection is an important criterion that should not be overlooked. This is the age of computers and mobile devices and data protection is significant as industries deal with private information and critical data about finance, healthcare, trade etc and it is vital that administrators who handle the data systems are capable of protecting data.

Every year, January 28 is earmarked as data privacy/protection day across Europe and the U.S. On this day, the focus is on spreading awareness about the importance of data privacy and how to protect data of users and organizations. However, it is important to be aware of the importance of data protection throughout the year, every day on a 24x7 basis.

When considering how to protect one’s online privacy, it is important not to overlook documents that are scanned and printed. The transition points from paper to digital format are vulnerable to data leakage and loss. So, how can you ensure data privacy and protection always? Consumers and individuals can be encouraged to have a stronger awareness and education about the importance of data protection. There should be a continuous focus on spreading this message.

Here are three practical ways of reducing the risk of data breach. ✓

Prevent data leakage: Studies show that almost 73 percent of workers have access to scanners and scanning capabilities. But many organizations have uncontrolled access to network scanning which can be a threat to data security.

Documents that are scanned and distributed by email are vulnerable since data leakage may occur when people are allowed unrestrained access to scanning and sensitive content. You can prevent data leakage by placing filters within scanning applications to restrict document access. These filters can be programmed in such a way as to search for specific words or character strings within scanned documents once they are digitized into searchable formats during the scanning process. Content filters can be established to search for terms such as “nondisclosure” or “confidential.” Once the terms are identified, the software can be programmed to take any number of actions – automatically encrypting the file before sending it, quarantining the file, or deleting it.

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Protection from unauthorized access: Most of the time documents are scanned into protected PDF files that are more secure than paper documents.

This prevents unwanted access to data and helps in keeping the documents confidential. Using PDF software, documents can be saved with a password to

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prevent unauthorized access. The second method is redaction, this tool helps to replace the selected areas pixel by pixel with redaction fill. It is important to save a copy of the original PDF. ✓

Do not overlook printing: Printing is often ignored in privacy protection.

Printed documents cannot be searched and hence they are difficult to be tracked and stored safely. It is also prone to human errors – one could accidentally take the wrong document from the printer or intentionally distribute copies outside of an organization. This could be as risky as hacking or malware. Researches show that 20 percent of all printed jobs are never retrieved by the original users. A method to prevent exposure of information is by using print management software that can hold your print job in a secure print queue until the output is authorized. This protected print release allows you to print from anywhere on your network and collect the documents from anywhere, anytime you prefer.

This not only ensures data protection but also minimizes paper waste from unclaimed print jobs.

Organizations using document scanning services and other outsourced solutions have to be extra careful about data protection. The outsourcing provider must have in place appropriate security measures to safeguard sensitive data and ensure maximum data privacy.

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