Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
(OP)
We have a small design business and would like to sound out the best way to protect our and our consultants drawing and design information. We have on various occasions heard of designers/cad operators who have media with copies of data from previous employers.
The drawing info in our office resides on a shared server which all the workstations have access to, all the workstations have dvd drives and usb ports. All our past projects and current projects are accessible, the past projects are there for the odd reference purpose. We realize that there must be an element of trust with your employees, but on occasion there could be the more unscrupulous or ambitious employee who can easily take advantage of such a situation, especially with flash drives etc.
So what is one to do, lock down the removable media, run monitoring software, keep only current projects accessible?.
How do other design engineering offices take care of this situation amicably and in a mature way?.
The drawing info in our office resides on a shared server which all the workstations have access to, all the workstations have dvd drives and usb ports. All our past projects and current projects are accessible, the past projects are there for the odd reference purpose. We realize that there must be an element of trust with your employees, but on occasion there could be the more unscrupulous or ambitious employee who can easily take advantage of such a situation, especially with flash drives etc.
So what is one to do, lock down the removable media, run monitoring software, keep only current projects accessible?.
How do other design engineering offices take care of this situation amicably and in a mature way?.





RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
Part of their employment contract could include language that they can't reveal, steal, etc. Most contracts do. Then if they get caught - you some recourse.
Bottom line - you do have to trust people - mostly. While I am not a super geek - I am sure given a little bit of time - I could crack all of our servers.
RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
I worked at a mid size firm for a while who used to do "Security Through Obscurity" as a simple stopgap measure sometimes. They weren't as worried about an employee stealing their standard details or notes, but were worried somewhat about access to sensitive bid information, so they'd still call that in a folder on the shared drive called "Laura's Wedding Photos" where nobody would think to look if they didn't already know what was in there.
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RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
> A clean and systematic filing system on the server to make it easier to archive and retrieve data. At a previous job, we had an electronic version of how the design files were stored in filing cabinets, which included, design reports, costing, analysis worksheets, design files, datasheets, etc.
> Some means of retrieving data files that are OBE by software version changes, etc. Orphaned data files are basically useless, so the archiving process needs ensure that data is also saved in some form of STP or IGS format. While you might not want to use them as a go-from for a new project, the standardized file formats will allow you to get pertinent information.
> Likewise applies to analysis reports, etc. Matlab, Mathcad, or Excel files need to be archived so as to be retrievable when the analysis program has orphaned the older versions of the datafiles.
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RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
Prospective employers like to see samples of an applicants work, they are usualy not impressed by college work, they want to see real world examples.
You can meet your employees half way on this, by allowing them to save, non sensitive, examples of work they do at your establishment. You vet what they have, and you, decide what they can put into their portfoleo. If they take anything else, then that, is stealing.
B.E.
The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor
RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
Drawoh hit it on the head, you need a security policy.
The defence industry has this pretty well down, but I suspect that you are a commercial ship builder or accessory manufacturer.
I am presuming you have contracts with non disclosure agreements.
Since it is virtually impossible to stop people using removable media devices ( I have one that folds up into a credit card.) one way would be Ronald Reagans old motto, " Trust but verify", impliment a random exit search policy.
I am afraid that for some part of that, you are going to have to look like "Big Daddy"
B.E.
The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor
RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
With a completely isolated universe for each user, collaboration becomes more difficult, re-use and commonality become more difficult, etc. While we'd like to have complete isolation with our classified computers, we'd double or triple the hardware resources we currently employ, and I'd suspect a similar issue with other computer-based processing.
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RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
You might trade a short period of turmoil of one errant worker with a permanent air of mistrust and surliness from all workers.
While removing USBs is certainly possible, you still have to allow for email and internet, so USB access may just be completely moot. One can easily create an FTP site and upload entire databases. So, do you want to go that step? As I mentioned earlier, this is the line of practicality, and mutual trust, that you cross at your own peril.
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RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
I agree that it may create distrust in certain environments (such as those were trust was already standard faire), but I don't agree in every case. Take, for example, the defense contractors mentioned earlier... do those employees fail to work hard because they think their employers don't trust secrets from getting out? Doubtful, or else they wouldn't work there. It's a given coming into the job that you will be scrutinized, your ability to transfer info will be severely hampered, etc. If you make it part of the corporate mentality form the beginning, one employee is no different than the next, so no feelings of mistrust (except in those predisposed to gruff feelings to begin with, and those employees will always be trouble no matter what you do).
Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
No, because we don't impose the severe restrictions suggested earlier. If we did, morale would most likely nosedive, and we'd get a workforce that was just low-side compliant, which is not what we want.
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RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
If you start at 8:00 am - it would probably be 10:00 am before everyone got to work??!!
And you have to hire the librarian and trust him/her??!!
Random audits might be good. Just look at the traffic once in awhile and see who is hitting what drive/folder. Any suspicious activity would surely pop up. Let people know that you doing this.
There are computer programs that will do this for you. Don't know any names but I know they exist.
RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
Archiving old projects and or keeping them in a read-only folder and then keeping track of file movement on current projects is most probably the way to go as the company knows what is happening and the cad guys only need to feel offended if they want to do file copying that is not approved of.
RE: Best Method to Protect Drawing Office Data
While the classified material requires a certain level of handling, because it's classified, we don't necessarily take a draconian approach either. So while there is no Internet access, mainly to prevent intrusions from the outside, we do have working CD drives, so someone could potentially walk away with classified information that way.
In the case of the server-based, unclassified, design files, we likewise do not impose draconian protection levels, like stripping away Internet access, removing USBs, removing CD drives, etc.
TTFN
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