Clean Desk Principles
Clean Desk Principles
What are clean desk principles?
- Employees are required to ensure that all sensitive or confidential information in hard copy or electronic form in their work area is securely stored at the end of the day and when they are expected to be away for an extended period.
- Computers must be locked with a password when the desk is unoccupied.
- All sensitive information must be removed from the work area and secured in a drawer when the desk is unoccupied or at the end of the work day.
- Cabinets containing sensitive information must be closed and locked when not in use.
- Passwords must not be left on sticky notes on or under the computer, nor can they be written in an accessible place.
- Printouts containing sensitive information should be retrieved from the printer immediately.
- Employees should shred sensitive documents when they are no longer needed.
- Whiteboards containing sensitive information should be wiped clean.
- Consider storage devices such as CDROM, DVD or USB as sensitive and secure them in a locked drawer.
Encrypting sensitive documents
If you upload sensitive documents to the Internet (share them via email, store them in cloud storage, etc.), you need to encrypt them first with a strong enough password.
Microsoft 365 (Office)
You can encrypt documents created with Microsoft 365, formerly Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) directly when saving them in the "Information" category.
7-Zip
If you want to encrypt another sensitive document that wasn't created with Microsoft 365, formerly Office, you can use the file compression program 7-Zip to do so. You can set the archive to be password protected when compressing.
1. Right-click on the document and select "Add".
2. In the opened window, select the format in which you want to archive (we recommend zip format).
3. Enter a sufficiently strong password (e.g. use a guide to a secure password or generate one in Bitwarden).
