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"Achiever's Interview with David Showalter"
David Showalter reveals information to help business owners struggling to balance business life with their personal life. He shares a rare insight into the changes he has made in his own life.
This week's Motivation & Self Esteem For Success...
Executive Coaching and the American President
Perhaps no one better than a former U.S. president has the right to advise executives:
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while...
Five Questions to Ask Yourself Before Starting a New Business
Owning a home used to be the “American Dream.” However, this long-standing goal that so many aspired to, and ultimately reached, has been replaced with a new goal -- becoming a business owner. At first glance it sounds perfect: Leave the...
Preparing For Change During International Expansion
It was Charles Darwin who once wrote: “It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”. Business survival in the 21st century will depend on just how much firms are willing and...
When Politics Prevent Innovation
When Politics Prevent Innovation Or… Still Fighting Battles and Losing Wars The objective is to beat the competition and make money. Everything a business organization does should be focused on that simple objective, with interpretation through...
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Filling the Data Leaks - the Importance of Digital Asset Protection
The flow of electronic data permeates the fibers of every
business. Try to make a transaction without accessing the binary
realm - bets are that even the cash register used to ring your
favorite morning beverage is accessing electronic data. Today,
business survival and success depends on immediate connectivity
and data communication.
Living in a digitized world has altered modes of business
communication as well. Shooting a quick email off with a pricing
quote or sending an answer to a email query are just as
commonplace as a client call. Email has evolved into the
standard mass communications tool, whether it be message
communications or as a document courier. According to Pew
Internet Research a mere decade ago, just 15% of adults in the
US went online, today that number has jumped to 63%.(1)
"On a typical day at the end of 2004, some 70 million
American adults logged onto the internet to use email, get news,
access government information, check out health and medical
information, participate in auctions, book travel reservations,
research their genealogy, gamble, seek out romantic partners and
engage in countless other activities. That represents a 37%
increase from the 52 million adults who were online on an
average day in 2000". (2)
The statistics show that the internet and email flood our very
existence. A business enterprise can't be effective or
successful without accommodating its wired clientele. Email is
now such an integral part of the work world that a USA Today
survey found that given a choice between giving up morning
coffee or the ability to use the internet at work, 52% chose
coffee.(3)
It's inevitable that some of yours and/or your company's data
will be transmitted outside the network or personal system.
Sharing unprotected electronic documents will ultimately cost
you and your business By putting your intellectual property at
risk.
Leakage of confidential intellectual property can seriously
threaten the viability of an incubating contract lead.
Unfortunately, email and documents meant for a select group can
easily and quickly enter the public sphere. Once released over
email, the transmitting flood of data which was once between
company and client can fall into the hands of competitors,
sometimes even forwarded by potential clients to competitors. Do
you want to give your competitors shortcuts to your clientele?
Each unsupervised electronic transmittal will poke hole upon
hole in a company's financial fortification.
Who's
protecting your small business enterprise's best interests
against these in unintentional information leaks? Certainly not
the government, when US President, George W. Bush voiced his
bias against email in his address to the American Society of
Newspaper Editors, saying "I don't email, however. And there's a
reason. I don't want you reading my personal stuff."(4) Nor does
Great Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair and the rest of
number 10 Downing Street trust the mass communication tool,
instead opting to use sticky notes.(5)
These are the drastic, archaic steps backwards those zealously
phobic of the digital communications era have adopted. Do you
see your business forgoing email for sticky notes? The likely
answer is no, as your customers won't be transitioning to the
sticky note 2.0 platform.
A small business enterprise shouldn't have to succumb to the
paranoia of the few and uneducated. From individuals to
small/medium business enterprises each piece of original bit and
byte created is just as important as the digital assets housed
by large business enterprise ventures. No matter how large or
small an enterprise's size, the same caution, care and security
should be afforded to the individual and small/medium business
entity.
Becoming actively aware of your digital assets and their
whereabouts allows the individual and small/medium business
enterprise or individual to managing just where that data lives.
Being an intelligent business emailer by using tools such as
digital rights software or limiting your distribution list are
surely a better ways to live online than implementing the sticky
note policy of Downing Street.
End Notes:
- - - - - - - - - -
1.) Lee Rainie, John Horrigan, PEW Report: Internet Evolution,
Chapter 4 "Internet: The Mainstreaming of Online Life." Pew
Internet Rearch 25 January 2005. http://www.pewinternet.org, 59.
2.) Ibid, 58.
3.) USA TODAY. McLean, Va.: Jul 14, 2005. B1.
4.) Bush, President George W., "Address to the American Society
of Newspaper Editors Convention," 14 April 2005.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050414-4.html
5.) 26 January 2004,
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/8651.html
About the author:
Marilee Veniegas is an alumni of the University of
Washington she joined the Marketing team at Essential Security Software, Inc. in 2005.
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