When it comes to cyber-criminals targeting your business – your team is your biggest vulnerability for security risks. You may have trained your employees to recognize funky websites, emails, or other things that just do not seem right. But, with a click of a button, your staff can compromise the system. With your employees accessing company data on personal or company devices, either in office or offsite, you must implement tactics to prevent valuable data from being easily accessible to cyber-criminals.
It is very common for people to use their birthdays, pet names, or even “password” as their passcodes – or they just meet the bare-minimum standards for required passcode complexity. Although, passcodes like these are easy to remember, it also means a cyber-criminal – or even a stranger can guess your password. It is essential for your staff to have a randomly generated passcode, and to require multiple levels of authentication for secure data access.
Many individuals work from home, or offsite – such as a local coffee shop. To protect your network, it is essential for you to invest in security tools, such as, email encryption, two factor authentications, and etc. Also, utilize bio-metric security and make sure to regularly update and backup your devices. It is also important that your staff does not leave their devices unattended. It can be simple as someone leaning over and seeing what they are working on, downloading a malware or spyware, or even swiping the entire device and walking out. All of this is a data breach and can cause cyber-security disasters.
Lastly, it is vital that you determine an employee’s accessibility and limitations to sensitive company data. By doing this you can monitor your data, and who has accessed it. Additionally, when an employee leaves the company, you must restrict their accounts and access to your data.
It is important to communicate these practices to your team, because they can help prevent your business from being a victim of cyber-security threats.