Information has always been and will continue to be one of the most important assets of a business. Information can be knowledge of the business acquired over decades, it can be information about the customers, products and potential customers. Without information a business would not succeed; today information is as vital as before but there is so much more of it going in and out of the business through the internet. Managing information is now not only extremely important but exceedingly difficult. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issues that revolve around information management methods and the tools.
Information management is crucial to the success of company; done right it can boost sales and cut costs, done poorly it can destroy the company. Software and hardware solutions can certainly help with establishing the basis for an information management system but they do not solve, privacy issues, intellectual property rights nor ensure that the system is actually used or used properly.
Privacy Issues:.
Storing information about customers, employees, any personal information about anyone, can lead to breach of privacy, lawsuits or loss of customers. Yet storing personal information ranging from simple things such as home address to social security or credit card numbers is generally a requirement for a successful business. Although the only way to be certain that the personal information stored in your database does not result in a lawsuit is not to store any personal information. Of course this is not an option; the next best thing is encryption and access management.
The best way to encrypt data is using public and private key based encryption. This method is particularly effective in cases like credit card numbers where it is the bank which does the billing and not the company that needs the decrypted information. All information concerning the credit card would be encrypted using a public key and would require a private key to be decrypted.