Many business owners would be surprised to learn what the biggest threat to their cyber security is: their own employees. That’s not to say that you’ve got a team of secret hackers who want to steal and sell your data. Most security threats occur when an employee makes simple mistakes due to lack of awareness.
The Key to Good Cyber Security
The most important part of maintaining good cyber security is educating your workforce.
Be cautious and take action before it becomes a problem. It can be difficult or even impossible to recover from an attack. Many companies are forced to hand over large sums of money in order to release their own data that hackers have encrypted. This often leads to further demands for money and some businesses find they can’t recover from the loss of both money and data.
A lot of these attacks can be prevented by simple education. Many companies might have some kind of training as part of the induction for new employees. However, it’s unwise to leave this training just to the induction when they’re already taking in a lot of new information about company policies and procedures.
Keep your team reminded and up to date, particularly if something new comes up or high-risk behaviour has been spotted. Of course, not all cyber-attacks are the fault of innocent mistakes. However, training your workers in good security measures is going to reduce the risk that your company is attacked and your data is stolen.
Here are some of the bad habits that can increase risk to your company:
Leaving it all to IT
There is a common misconception that anything computer related is solely down to your IT department. However, they can’t control what people in accounts or marketing are doing to their own machines. They can’t be responsible for everything.
If people are picking simple passwords or not being cautious with email attachments, that’s not something your IT people can stop. Therefore, having a more open discussion about cyber security with all your workers is important.
Bad password practice
People are still picking bad passwords, passwords that anyone can guess. SplashData, who release an annual “Worst Password List” found that the most common passwords in 2016 were “password” and “123456”. These are non-movers on the list and are probably favourites among hackers.
Weak passwords and using the same password for several sites, both on personal and work accounts mean that once one account password is guessed, others are also at risk.
Forgetting About Ex-employees
Whether an employee leaves on good terms or is fired, it can be easy to forget about the access to company data they will still have. Most people could log back into work accounts if they wanted. If hackers target them, even when they’ve stopped working for you, then your data could still be at risk. You might want to think about revoking access to company accounts or changing passwords once someone has left.
Using Cloud Storage for Company Files
The Cloud has become more and more popular for personal and business use. Some employees might use the cloud to work remotely. While this is convenient for modern businesses, the problem is that documents in the cloud are at risk of poor security. Cloud data is often easier for others to access and so any company data is at risk of being used against you.
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