Knowing your employees means verifying the backgrounds of new employee applicants or employees assigned to work on sensitive projects. Confirm that they are who they say they are and not an undercover operative looking to photocopy company secrets for profitable sale to your competitor. This can easily be done by asking the person who telephones specific information such as their name, company name, address, and telephone number, and then offering to call them back with, or mail the information to them. For information requests by mail, return addresses and other information provided with the request should be noted. Regardless of the method of the request for company information, the information provided by the person making the request should be confirmed through the telephone, city, or industrial directory.
Many companies have generic overview brochures that are used for such requests.
These brochures give general details on the company without divulging the names of customers, suppliers, or pricing data. This computer must be kept in a separate locked office or room at all times, and must also have anti-virus and password security software. This computer must be checked for viruses on a weekly basis and the password used to access files must be changed just as often. The computer hardware must be locked or bolted down to a very, large piece of furniture or to the floor or wall. It is also in your best interest to place a security device known as a disk drive lock over the disk drive bays of your computer to stop anyone from making a copy of these files on a floppy disk, or worse, inserting a disk and placing a virus in the computer.