Can you risk your sensitive information leaking? Many organisations find it difficult to see the benefits from publishing standards. I remove the barriers to show the benefits from each publishing standard in my next few posts. Publishing standards aim to:
- Reduce the risk of sensitive information leaks
- Improve the overall user experience
- Make people using your intranet more satisfied with it
- Improve people’s productivity
- Improve people’s quality of work
Information needs to be correctly categorised so people can access all the content they have permission to view and use. Balance the different needs so information that people can access is easily available and does not hinder their work by unnecessary logins or passwords. Your organisation must also feel confident sensitive information is not at risk.
Permissions need to be correctly set so information complies with your organisation’s Information Retention Policy. This also applies to applications e.g. HR information about pay and performance, which can contain sensitive information. The different levels of permissions needed by your organisation will vary depending on its culture and purpose.
You also need to consider at the site level as well as at the organisational level. Here owners of a site can decide who has permission to use their site for different activities. This will vary depending on the publishing tool used and the culture within your organisation.
Data Protection, particularly Personal Data and European Union rules for its use and storage, may affect your intranet systems, particularly Human Resources systems. Within the European Union, it varies on what is published about individuals and even how it is published. Some information needs permission from an employee before it can be published. For other countries it can be shown without this within the same organisation.
You need to take advice from HR and legal experts to ensure your intranet and content owners comply. Sometimes it is better to take extra time and steps to keep good employee relations and follow your organisation’s values and culture even if strictly you do not need to for some employees.
Copying any content, especially an image, photo, or multi-media file, from another website to insert on an intranet site can be an infringement of copyright unless you have permission from the copyright owner.
Benefits
Knowing that you are protecting sensitive information across your intranet gives three main benefits:
- People using your intranet will be confident the information they are using has the right level of permissions set and they are able to rely on who has access to any sensitive content.
- For you it is also important from a governance view to have confidence the correct people are using the right information. You have integrated your training, guidance and support for publishers to help establish a common understanding. This prevents sensitive information being available to people who should not permission to see it.
- Your organisation can be confident your intranet complies with its information security policies. The risks of sensitive information leaking are reduced which could risk damaging to its brand and reputation.
Are there other benefits you have found? Please let me know.
In my next post I will cover content needing to be found.