Computers are similar to kitchen drawers. You can store a lot of data on your computers. However, it will also accumulate a lot of clutter with time. If you have an entire organization, then it can become very difficult to manage this cyber clutter. Your employees will be generating an exponential amount of data. Thus, you can’t clean all the clutter in one day. It is important to clear out cyber clutter as it will help you in organizing your business. Your business will become more productive. It will also help you in mitigating the vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities come with cyber clutter. The only way to mitigate them is by reducing the clutter. In this article, we are going to talk about the main areas where you should de-clutter. This will help you in keeping your digital presence clean.

Physical Devices

These devices are the most important thing in your environment. They are going to take the most space. You need to think about computers, servers, software, and firewalls. These physical devices are going to store some proprietary information. The form of this information will vary according to the physical device. Thus, it is important to declutter these devices. We are going to share some tips that will help you with decluttering these devices.

Try to implement a strict document deletion policy. Your entire team should know about this policy. If your user computer gets stolen, then you will lose a lot of data.
You need to think about the sensitive documents that you are storing. These documents are very important for your organization. Thus, you should ensure that general people can’t access these devices. Make sure that you are not storing these documents in the local machine. Also, these documents should be encrypted.
Many companies are using cloud storage solutions. Make sure that you are enforcing automatic backup. This will ensure that you can easily restore your data in case of a data breach.

Cloud Storage

The best thing about cloud storage is that it will not take any physical space in your server room. However, many companies forget about quality control. They will do everything to control the data in their physical devices. But, they will often forget about the data stored in the cloud platforms. Cloud storage is mostly hosted by large providers like Amazon and Microsoft. However, you should still de-clutter your data.

It is very easy to store your data on the cloud platform. However, it is also important to regularly clean this data.

Create your company document procedures and policies. Make sure that everyone is following these policies while using the cloud platform. You can use features like least privilege permissions for enforcing these policies.
Most cloud storage applications have their own built-in security. You can use these features for protecting your data from exfiltration. It will also alert you in case of any suspicious activity.
You should restrict your users from accessing sensitive data. Attackers can hack into your employee’s data for stealing your company data. Thus, make sure that only stakeholders can access sensitive company data.

Email accounts are very important for your employees. They are considered as the biggest data hub. Email accounts are similar to your HR department members. You can use email security tools for protecting your employee’s email accounts. There are various email encryption tools available in the market. These tools will encrypt all the emails. Thus, you don’t need to worry about hacking tips. You can follow these tips for securing your company’s email accounts:

You should have a limit on the data storage of your email accounts. If you don’t have a limit, then your employees can store an unlimited amount of data. In this case, you need to regularly clean out their email boxes. Your employees should know about the risks associated with email accounts. They should never store their personal contact information in their email inbox.
Most employees don’t know about various email features. Thus, you should educate them about the basic features. Make sure that they can use your email service tools. They should know how to search for sensitive data. Also, you should help them in setting up automatic deletion rules. They should also set up rules which will help them in finding important emails.
Your organization data retention policy should also include emails. This step will affect the permissions that your employees have. For example, you can ensure that only your IT team can remove emails from individual inboxes.

Applications

Many organizations ignore the pervasiveness of applications. It is important to use MDM or Mobile Device management for protecting your employee’s device. Almost everyone is using their mobile devices in the workplace. These devices can help your employees in completing their work quickly. However, you should implement an MDM policy. Also, you should properly review your MDM policy. You can consider following these things when you are reviewing your MDM policy:

Make sure that apps are restricted only to employees that actually need them. For example, your engineers don’t need access to Instagram and Facebook. However, your marketing team needs access to these apps.
Some apps will have accounts associated with them. You should document all the important and relevant information. Sometimes your employees will leave the organization. Thus, you should ensure that they are not the sole owner of apps.
You need to securely configure all these applications. However, most applications will hide their settings. Thus, it is important to review all the apps that you are using. You should first create procedures for securing your data. After that, you can allow the general employees to use them.

Conclusion

You can use these tips for de-cluttering your IT environment. This will ultimately help you in securing your organization. Also, it will help you in increasing your organization’s efficiency. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire can help you in de-cluttering your IT environment. They will also review all your policies. This will ensure that your data is protected from attackers. They can even create an IT strategy for your business. This strategy will help you in managing your IT. If you need more information regarding cyber clutter, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™ services and solutions in how we can help your business.