Introduction

JIC (South Moravian Innovation Centre) was founded in 2003 as an interest association of legal entities. Its members are the South Moravian Region, the corporate city of Brno as well as Brno universities. The main aim of the centre is to help the foundation and development of innovative companies. It supports innovative companies, science and research and resourceful students. It provides money and support for promising projects and finds investors and also cooperates with partners and sponsors. It interconnects science and research with commercial companies and it helps to put innovative technologies in practice. The basic forms of support for young innovative companies are finance, guidance, contacts and spaces. JIC runs Technology Incubator VUT (Brno University of Technology) - the first and the largest institution of this kind in the Czech Republic. Within the period of three years, the incubator expanded by tens of companies. JIC employs 16 professionals, above all experienced project managers and consultants from the area of technology and biotechnology. The company's turnover was 80 million CZK in 2006.

Situational analysis

JIC works with sensitive data especially in the area of the protection of confidential information of incubated companies (approximately 30 subjects) and potential entities interested in incubation. It mainly concerns the information contained in the business intention, the information about the strategic decision of companies and reports from consultations. Last but not least, JIC stores documents concerning the ideas of inventors and innovators, still on the way to a patent or industrial design application. JIC guarantees that sensitive information will not be misused. JIC consultants almost always use notebooks for their work, which, in case of theft, can represent an immediate information risk not only for JIC but also for all incubated companies. The data are by no means centrally encrypted and the media transmission is done in an encrypted way. JIC own necessity to secure data mainly concerns internal information and internal processes, guidelines and its own know-how.

Solution proposal

The solution of full-area deployment of the security software Safetica® Enterprise was proposed. At first, the system was deployed on the computers of all consultants whose data were valued as the most critical. Then, it was recommended that all key data were secured by a single access security key, which, in case the access password is forgotten, is only in the hands of the security manager. After the first deployment of the Safetica® Enterprise software and the common security policy settings, there has been an increase in the level of the company's security and it has brought about easier administration for both the administrator and the user. Every user administers his own secure data.

Benefits

The solution mainly enabled the company to:

• set out a single data security policy within the company
• secure all saved documents against misuse in case of theft or unauthorized access
• transparent and at the same time secure access to its data and their secure sharing with other computers
• extend the existing system of backup by safe backups of users' secured data
• work on company's projects at home with the help of secured portable media

"As an executive manager, I often take my work at home, and therefore, I am responsible for the amount of confidential information I carry here and there. It is good to think ahead about what would happen if I lost the data, and how to avoid it best."