Let’s get one thing straight here right off the bat. Annie’s not ok.

She’s worried about the security of her data.

With the threat of hackers looming over her head, she’s concerned about keeping her client information safe and her business financials secure. So she invests the time in creating a business continuity plan and implements safety precautions to safeguard her existing technologies. Things are going great until a higher level executive steals an external hard drive containing confidential client information from the accounting office.

What went wrong? How did this internal threat slip by?

Annie was so concerned about outside threats, that she completely disregarded the possibility of internal data breaches. She didn’t protect the one area that most wrong-doers would consider first.

It’s simple really.

Annie wasn’t thinking like a criminal.

Are you?

If you think your business is protected just because you have a security policy in place to deal with hackers, you’re sadly mistaken. In order to be truly secure when it comes to your business, you have to have policies in place to deal with both internal and external threats, which includes physical theft.

A great example of this is the Lowe’s case a few years ago.  

In an elaborate scam, three men reportedly stole more than $80,000 worth of merchandise from Lowe’s Home Improvement stores. Every day over the course of three months, the men would drive for hours going from Lowe’s store to Lowe’s store, stealing high dollar tool sets. One man would walk in, buy an expensive tool set, leave the store and hand his receipt to one of his cohorts. The second accomplice would walk in, get another package of the same tool set and leave the store with the package and the receipt, appearing to have legitimately made a purchase. After doing this at a couple of different stores, the men would then go to another Lowe’s, return the merchandise and pocket the cash.

Being the large-scale hardware chain that it is, I’m certain Lowe’s has some kind of security feature in place to deal with things like data hackers or breaches, but when it comes to physical security, these stores were clearly lacking. Perhaps if they had some way of marking the receipts to indicate that the item had been returned, a crime spree like this one wouldn’t have occurred so easily.

There’s no reason to be struck by a smooth criminal. It all starts by protecting your business both externally AND internally. Need a hand? Then give us a call today to speak to schedule a private briefing with one of our security experts. We’re here to help!