In order to protect confidential electronic data, but still recognize the need for work outside of the office, several provisions may be considered in employee agreements as well as in Protective Orders used in litigation. As an initial matter, you may want to provide that confidential information may only be viewed in the recipient’s offices (including home office, hotel room and conference rooms) where access is limited, and thus may not be viewed in any public place such as a commercial airplane, train, airport terminal, train station or restaurant. As for an electronic storage device itself, you should provide that home or personal computers that are used (if permitted at all), not only be password protected, but the device must be protected from intrusions by a software or hardware firewall. Also, to the extent there is confidential software that is being analyzed by employees, counsel or experts using source code editors, interactive development environments, or other such tools, any automatic backup or caching on such tools must be disabled. And, upon removal of any confidential information stored on electronic storage devices, the user or recipient of the information must use appropriate software to erase (wipe) the disk space used to store the confidential information.

The most effective step at the protection of electronic information, however, is to require encryption of anything that might ever leave the office. So if it’s being copied to a laptop, for example, it must be encrypted. If it is being copied to a flash drive, it must be encrypted. If it is being emailed, it must be encrypted.

The good news is that encryption can be nearly seamless: Operating systems can include encrypted file systems, computers can perform encryption at the hardware level, and enterprise-level email systems can automatically encrypt and decrypt external email messages and attachments. Requiring enablement of these features can be a part of an employment agreement or Protective Order. An employment agreement or Protective Order can also address remote access to the company’s or law firm’s computer network, duplication of electronically-stored discovery, and the use of any portable media (including smart phones and portable media players).

It is virtually impossible to provide 100 percent security for the protection of confidential information, but by placing restrictions on the use of electronic information, you can go a long way in preventing accidental disclosure of your corporation’s confidential information.

via IP: Protecting Against Disclosure of Electronic Information.