Simple Tasks to Improve Cybersecurity

Many businesses need their employees to do the same thing day-in and day-out. With that type of repetitiveness, situations pop up where some crucial stuff is overlooked. Employees that are distracted with their own productivity are susceptible to making mistakes that could have dire consequences for your business. This month we thought we would give you a few pointers on how to communicate the importance of vigilance to your dedicated employees.

Getting Employees to Identify Threats

The average employee comes to work and produces. This isn’t a problem until their lack of awareness of other matters hurts the company. Often met with “that isn’t my job”, it has to be explained that security concerns are a part of their job. Employees often can’t see how it is their responsibility, but since 90 percent of data breaches happen because of user negligence, it has to be explained that it could put the entire business in peril. Their cybersecurity efforts can literally save their jobs. 

Document Your Policy and Train Your Staff

One of the best ways to make them understand their role in your business’ cybersecurity efforts is to put together a comprehensive data security policy. Making people understand how to spot a potential threat and what needs to be done to mitigate it is easier if it is in writing. Moreover, you will want to have a training strategy in place to ensure that you are doing all you can to educate them on the potential risks. 

Cybersecurity Best Practices

If it’s done right, a business’ cybersecurity training policy will pay for itself, as long as your employees follow through. Spending huge amounts of capital on training only to have one of them fall for a phishing attack is a double-whammy. Here are some talking points that you should cover in your training.

• Threats - Outlining the types of threats and how they are approached is a major part of giving your staff the resources to combat cybercrime.
• Password policies - Ensuring that your staff understands how to make an appropriate password, and having a system in place to reset that password at least quarterly, are two ways to help manage authentication problems. 
• Web practices and protection - Threats are going to come in. Knowing how to identify potential threats and how to use web-facing resources securely can go a long way toward mitigating threats.
• Email practices and protection - Much like web protections, your staff need to know how to spot threats in email, and what to do with that information once they have it.
• Preventative measures - Being proactive and constantly monitoring your network is a great way to keep threats from becoming business problems. 

Once you educate and train your staff, you will want to consistently test them to ensure that they understand what the threats look like and how to eliminate them once they are detected. If you need help with your training or your cybersecurity, don’t hesitate to call us at (703) 743-3056.