Confidential information means any business, employee, or customer data that is not public and could harm the company or individuals if disclosed or misused. It includes all information that must be kept private to protect the company’s operations, competitiveness, and compliance.
Confidential information must be protected against unauthorized access or disclosure. Only authorized personnel should have access to confidential information.
Common types of confidential information in U.S. small and midsize businesses (SMBs)
- Employee data: personal details, payroll information, health or benefits records
- Login information, credentials, and passwords
- Customer information: contact details, contracts, orders, payment data
- Business & financial data: pricing, quotes, financial statements, budgets, internal reports
- Operational know-how: processes, procedures, internal manuals, training materials, technical procedures, recipes, source code, calculation formulas, etc.
- IT and access credentials: passwords, API keys, internal system settings
- Legal and strategic documents: NDAs, partnership agreements, business plans
- Supplier and partner information: terms, performance data, or price lists
- Intellectual property (copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets)
- Strategic plans
How to protect confidential information?
In practice, legal, organizational and technical measures or its combination are used to protect confidential information, the most common of which are:
- The protection of the company's intellectual property is included in contracts with employees
- In contracts with suppliers and business partners, the protection of confidential information is in the form of an NDA
- Access control to information is a natural part of company processes
- The company protects confidential information using various technical means (e.g. encryption)
Why should confidential information be protected?
- Confidential information is an organization's most valuable information assets. Their loss or disclosure can result in great financial damage, loss of business position on the market, and in an extreme situation, the existence of the company as such can be threatened.
How to protect your confidential information?
- by legal measures - for example, using NDA, confidentiality agreements, using intellectual property protection, and the like
- organizational measures and means - access control, limiting access to information, managing access rights
- technical measures and tools - for example, software enforcing access right, user monitoring software, using encryption of storage