It’s a regular occurrence. Before leaving, the ex-salesman copied the customer list spreadsheet and sales pipeline. A key employee took off with major contracts. Somehow most employees know how much management makes. That rogue group of staff steals all of the standard procedure files and starts a competing business.
If someone wants to hurt you or steal from you, they likely will. All that you can do is take reasonable precautions and then determine what you can prove and are willing to spend versus the damages. While stealing is a criminal act, you must have clear proof. The reality is that the authorities are far too busy dealing with drugs and civil court cases are difficult to win, while paying attorneys well.
After a data breach, customers get serious and the discussion quickly turns to key-loggers tracking every employee’s move and camera systems continuously scanning all parts of the offices. This approach is expensive, often leads to poor employee morale, someone has to maintain the systems, and management doesn’t have time to review the reports.
A better recommendation is SharePoint Online instead:
- File shares are converted to sites with specific permissions by user group. If you’re not part of the permitted group, you can’t even see the site.
- IT doesn’t need to be an owner or have permission to any of the files on a site. Unfortunately, most data breaches are by administrators.
- User name and date/time are recorded when files are edited. This little feature is very difficult to determine on most systems, even with third-party software.
- Previous versions may be enabled, along with follow alerts e-mailed to you on any access of critical files. So in addition to the site recycle bin, you’re much more able to recover from simple user errors as well as knowing who affected what files.
For nominal cost, your file security is light-years ahead of that old file server. See for yourself by trying the Office 365 free trial for 30 days.