Privacy Week - Good habits with information when working

Another way to protect sensitive information – both personal and organisational – is to maintain good habits with how we store documents in the workplace. It might seem a little fussy, but how many of us leave multiple versions of a document in several locations within Fire and Emergency’s drives?

You should always be sure of where we are storing or sharing files. For example if you’ve added a document to a temporary transfer folder, you also need to remember that this was only meant to be ‘temporary’ – and once the colleague or team you’ve shared the file with has accessed it, then make sure you delete from that location.

Within your team, another good habit to maintain is to decide on where a master version of your documents should be stored. This may seem a little heavy-handed if the file is still a work in progress or a simple piece of copy that doesn’t contain personal information – but if it does, it shouldn’t be available in several locations, as it significantly increases the risk of you losing control over who can access it, or of you losing it completely.

At Fire and Emergency, the reality is that we gather and use personal information in our work every day. So, creating a set of good habits not only helps protect this information, and as a bonus, also ensures we are all working on the same version.

Another factor is working remotely. Many of us work from home or are required to work off-site to complete our roles. It’s important to follow the same good habits you’d use at a station or in the office. Always follow ICT’s advice on how to share information from the field, or how to access it.

You should also never leave Fire and Emergency supplied equipment such as phones and laptops in public locations, and if you’re unfortunate to have one of these items stolen, you must report it straight away.

Maintaining good habits with information and data is a simple and effective way to help keep our systems secure.

Please take some time to read ICT’s Acceptable Use Policy here

We also recommend taking 10 minutes to complete the Information Security Awareness(external link) module on the Learning Station. You will need to log into the Portal to access this.

You can download Privacy Week posters and other resources for your station via the Office of the Privacy Commissioner website(external link)