While outsourcing has proved to be beneficial in many ways, many firms are hesitating because of security issues. The threat is real — cybercrime may have cost the world $600 billion last year.

Below are some tips that enable you to outsource securely and benefit from this service.

Review your security policy

The first step to be followed before outsourcing is to ensure that your security policy is in order. It should have a data classification that can distinguish between business-critical and general data. These guidelines and protocols should also be presented clearly to avoid ambiguity, confusion and misunderstandings.

Do not give full access to your data

It is unnecessary for an outsourcing partner to approach your business-critical data all the time. Ideally, you should create a separate shared folder for a remote team to access to their outsourced jobs only. By this way, your sensitive data could not be exposed or misused.

The rule of least privilege

Limiting data access could reduce the risk of being hacked or leaked, especially some of your client’s information is confidential. For example, outsourced team does not need to see your clients’ TFNs when using Xero. With some reports, you should assign their access rights to Read-only mode.

Prepare for the Worst, Hope for the Best

Backups are critical to restore business operations in the event of a security breach. Use the 3-2-1 backup rule — have at least three copies of essential data, on two different media, and at least one copy located offsite. Also, be sure to test your backups regularly.

More information

Lastly, if this sounds like something you would like to know more about, please contact us. We are here to help.