Security breaches in the United States alone costs around 10$ billion. Preventing these breaches is the key to keeping your company’s operation running smoothly without fear or anxiety. Here are some ways to help improve the security programs in your company.
1. Get Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) certification
Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism is a cooperative cargo security effort between Customs Border Protection and the full supply chain of importers, carriers, consolidators, licensed customs brokers and manufacturers. Its purpose is to strengthen the international supply chains and improve border security. Most freight forwarding companies today are making efforts on joining the program as it provides several benefits such as giving their supply chains better protection. They are also taking the initiative to get C-TPAT certification as a compliance requirement among the partnership of different companies. This is a better way of determining the strengths and weaknesses than a regulated self-evaluation of security. This action can expose many security holes and vulnerabilities within your company’s supply chain.
2. Train employees and increase their security awareness
Highly trained employees can avoid and mitigate common mistakes and can identify potential threats which can minimize the risk of losing your cargo and damaging your company. On the other hand, C-TPAT requires that a security awareness program should be established and maintained to recognize and foster awareness of security vulnerabilities to the vessel. In order to increase the security knowledge, encourage your employees to undergo training to gain knowledge and for them to know what they should do during sudden attacks or unanticipated situations involving breach and terminal accidents. For a long-term gain, a company should consider providing annual training for the employees or better yet a quarterly training in order to raise their level of awareness in their respective workplace. There are topics that can be tackled during the sessions such as the following:
- Identifying and reporting suspicious activities
- Detecting internal and/or external fraudulent actions
- Promotion and maintenance of security procedures
- Customs and law enforcement
3. Limit both physical and digital access for employees or visitors
As an organization, it is a necessity to implement a strict protocol when it comes to accessing different branches or departments of the business to prevent any harm. It is essential for your organization to require your employees with an identification that is visible and take inventory of what data every employee may or may not have access to. Also, determine which employees still need access and those who don’t to limit the amount of data access.
For visitors, they should provide a document of their identity and their purpose of visit before providing access in the establishment. Be mindful to escort every single one of them to their respective area which is according to their purpose stated in the documents and never give access to anyone to sensitive areas unless authorized.
4. Protect your data centre
Your data centre is one of the most important branches of your company. This is the place that contains your company’s sensitive information. So access there should be limited to selected employees only, especially now that there are numbers of reports of security attacks growing year after year. In fact, it turns more and more sophisticated that it overwhelms the connection with data which even makes IT personnel more vulnerable to security breaches – whether physical or digital. This one of the major reasons companies consider hiring Offshore back office solutions to set it apart from operations and receive the best security for their data. To secure your important data environment try to learn these five methods and implement to your data centre. This includes:
- Protect your data centre from threats that cannot be stopped by other security devices
- Secure the availability of the data centre services
- Protect the data centre infrastructure and connectivity as well as customer services and data
- Provide much-needed visibility at the data centres
- Detect emerging threats by looking beyond the borders of the data centre
With even more focus around the modern data centre—IT administrators should find a way to better secure their infrastructure. There’s no doubt that reliance around data centre platforms will continue to increase. This means that every security measure that could help your environment safe from new types of attacks must be considered.
5. Improve the accuracy of data
Data quality management is one of the keys to any company’s success. To have accurate data is a really important aspect of the freight industry. The task to maintain the highest data accuracy is of utmost importance as the same data is used by the top management while taking key business decisions. Just like other industry, freight industry also has busy days. They continue to create a complex environment where an individual can focus on different tasks at the same time to increase the accuracy of information when one branch of the company only focuses on one task. The accuracy of information is crucial when it comes to managing shipments, employees, and the development of the company. That is why some companies separate different workforce by functional departments so that the performance of each can become streamlined thus producing a high quality of service. It is just like how most companies partner with Cargowise Back Office Operators to maintain the integrity and precision of their data.
If you have a problem with the data accuracy in your company, here are a few things you need to know to improve.
-
Identify the source causing the inaccuracies
Incorrect data can result from the movement of data from one database to another, incorrect values or time-bound changes. To stop further errors from occurring, identify the right data sources, both internally and externally, and try to plug the gap. Find the cause of data inaccuracy and try fixing it right away to improve the quality of the incoming data.
-
Use the latest software
Do not settle from what you currently have and avail the latest software. Utilizing Optical Character Recognition and Intelligent Character Recognition are some of the latest software that can reduce the inaccuracy in data to a vast extent. These tools can automatically read and extract some types of data. Lesser typing will leave you with fewer mistakes and your team will have more time to analyze the entered data.
-
Double-check the data with reviews
One way of minimizing errors is by reviewing your work. Find an efficient system where data is meticulously reviewed and double-checked. You could hire someone who can check the data, identify errors and remove them.
-
Avoid overloading your team
Do not pressure your team to achieve unrealistic data entry targets. Overloading your team will only make them tired that eventually will lead to higher chances of errors. If there is more work, hire more resources and delegate the work equally among team members.
-
Try out automated error reports
Automated error reports are great to use when you are inputting the same kind of data. By chance, a social security number has nine digits. If you enter fewer digits, the software itself will generate an automated error report and alert your team by point out the error in the social security number.
-
Provide training to your employees
Make sure that your team understands the importance of the data that they are encoding. They should understand the role of data entry of your business and how it can be affected. Encourage your team to undergo training from Cargowise One Training Service to mold them to become a better one and be more responsible.
-
Adhere robust data entry accuracy standards
Companies should try to adapt data entry quality standards such as matching, geocoding, data profiling, data monitoring, linking, etc. This would help in ensuring that the data entered conforms to pre-defined data standards which in turn help in improving the data quality.
With a proper application, these tips will surely help your company reduce the inaccuracies in data entry, and the result will reflect in your freight forwarding and, soon enough, enhance your security
