What measures are taken for the security of Sensitive Data in a Software Company ??

By Vijay Khubchandani on August 12, 2012 5 Comments / 1833 views

Apart from the External Diligence like Copyrights, Trademarks and Patents, what are the measures taken inside the Company, during Development, to protect the Data / Code / Prototype ??

Comments

Vijay Khubchandani

5 Comments

Rakesh Waghela August 12, 2012, 3:50 pm

1) NDA & Non Compete Agreements signed by stake holders ( developers etc.. )
2) Clean & Paperless Desks & A Paper Shredder for destroying print outs !
3) Host code on a version control systems, audit everything including.
4) Put periodic reminders ( via Post It notes, emails & SMSes ) about “secrecy” of a system.
Vijay Khubchandani August 13, 2012, 11:58 am

Thanks for the guidance Rakesh..
Shomiron Das Gupta August 14, 2012, 7:47 am

Hello Vijay,

Yes apart from the items that become a legal deterrence to stealing code, you must have technical barriers in place that make stealing code difficult. In most cases easy access to code provides deniability to an employee, and allows them move code around without a check. As an employer you may not be able to win a case (if it comes to that) in the court if you have not ensured tight controls that secure your code from being stolen.

Some controls that I found very effective in air-tight enterprises:

Basic control over what is going out, DLP, proxy scanners, USB restrictions etc etc — these are common. Having a BYOD environment that multi-boots into a thin client that hosts the coding environment, here the employee writes code and leaves the environment behind in office when he takes his laptop back home. Since he boots into the environment over the wire at office, he has nothing stored locally on his disk. This is one of the most stringent methods I have come across.

This as far as I am concerned is for stealing code, however stealing ideas is a higher challenge for employers.
Vijay Khubchandani August 20, 2012, 2:33 pm

Shomiron, that’s a very vital piece of Information.. Thanks a lot for sharing.. 🙂

And btw, you’ve got a nice and unique first name..
Sai Rodinhood Pothuri August 20, 2012, 3:00 pm

Hi Vijay,

i been looking for same information.. thanks for people who shared the information

Thanks

Sai