Top 6 Capabilities Required for SharePoint Encryption

Failing to encrypt content properly still remains a challenge in 2013 SharePoint Encryption despite industry experts recommending it as an important line of defence against data breaches.

In an IT World article on best practices for preventing breaches, Leon Rodriguez, director of the Office for Civil Rights is quoted as saying that encryption technology is key to avoiding breaches. He continues within an HHS announcement to say, “Encryption is an easy method for making lost information unusable, unreadable and undecipherable.”

Most companies fall into three boats; one they either do not encrypt at all; two, they are encrypting content based on standards from five years ago; or three they are automatically encrypting content within SharePoint based on the presence of sensitive content.

For those organizations in the first two boats, here are six capabilities you need to provide if handing any sensitive personal or health-related data (PII or PHI), or confidential company information (intellectual property (IP), board documents, M&A).

1. Secure content at the item level to ensure only intended audiences can access it no matter where it resides in SharePoint. Native SharePoint permissions are set on the folder level so if a document is moved or copied the permissions go with it.

2. Automatically identify sensitive content and immediately encrypt the information when found. This is especially important for securing information that may already be in the system.

3. Provide the ability to manually classify content as it is created to ensure security restrictions are set when it is added to the system.

4. Encrypt sensitive content so if it does make it out of SharePoint only intended audiences can view the information.

5. Ensure SharePoint documents accessed on the iPad have item level encryption to make content unreadable and prevent backdoor access to documents.

6. Ensure highly confidential documents cannot be emailed, printed or saved to the desktop to help prevent intentional or accidental data loss.

Adding document encryption and distribution restrictions to your standard processes makes it safe to store the most confidential documents in SharePoint without fear of information accidentally or intentionally making it into the wrong hands.

Learn more about securing SharePoint by reading the eight key features to look for in a SharePoint content security solution.

This article was wrote by  Kurt Mueffelmann, HiSoftware . HiSoftware are signed up as silver exhibitors for ESPC14.

For expert advice on data Security, check out James Baldwin’s ESPC13 conference presentation on ‘SharePoint Infrastructure Advanced Management and Data Protection‘.  Download Now>>

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