Office Security

Unfortunately for most companies, the greatest risk of theft or sabotage (conventional or computer), often comes from the firm's employees themselves. In fact, many experts believe that a significant percentage of small business failures are directly related to internal theft of money, property, information, and time. Few occurrences are as potentially destructive to a business as employee theft, embezzlement, or misappropriation of company funds.

Business security experts warn that employee theft can take many forms. Examples include:

• Forgery of company checks for personal gain.
• Using a "ghost payroll," which occurs when one or more employees create "phantom" employees, submit time cards for those employees, and then cash their paychecks themselves.
• Outright theft of cash from a register drawer.
• "Sweethearting," at the cash register, which can mean granting a friend or other person a discount at the register when they pay, undercharging them, or ringing up fewer items than the person has actually bought.

Internal computer theft has become one of the most common forms of employee theft now that computers have become more common in nearly every industry sector. Indeed, employees often are more computer literate than their supervisors, which may strengthen the temptation to abscond with proprietary information or otherwise engage in illicit activities. Computer theft can take many forms, including false data entry, which is almost impossible to track; slicing off small amounts of data or money that add up over time; superzapping, which occurs when a computer network security bypass code falls into the wrong hands; and scanning, or using a high-speed computer to locate data that would be impossible to find by hand, then using that data for illegal purposes.

Sabotage, which can also cost millions, almost always involves disgruntled current or former employees and can take almost any form, from defacing company property to deleting or altering important company data. As mentioned above, using access-control cards for employees that can be easily deactivated makes it easier to keep ex-employees out of the workplace and track the activities of current employees.

Because employee theft is so prevalent and so costly to businesses, a business owner needs to take every precaution and use every means possible to stop employee theft. Some of the steps that can be taken include:

• Making sure that security starts at the top. Executives must set a good and honest example. Establish a clear policy on theft and security and distribute it to all employees.
• Install a security program that meets your company's needs.
• Follow up on references provided by prospective new hires.
• Keep checkbooks locked up.
• Control cash flow and have good documentation on where money is spent.
• Do not leave bookkeeping to just one person without checks and balances.
• Audit internal financial documents frequently using independent auditors.
• Only allow a few people to have authority to sign checks.
• Check all invoices to make sure they match what was delivered.

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