Your business will never face a bigger IT threat than your employees. Yes, every business owner has to come to terms their employees are the biggest weakness in their cyber protection. As a business owner, you may already be on top of the latest cyberthreats and already practicing safe habits online; that doesn’t mean your employees are as proficient. For all you know, your employees could be putting your business in danger at this very moment. How? They may be using company equipment connected to an unsecure WiFi network. They could be installing ‘anti-viruses’ that are actually spying and stealing information right off company devices. The list goes on. What can you do to change this?
1. Start with Educating Your Employees
Simply put, employees are the biggest IT threat to your company due to their lack of knowledge regarding the dangers lurking on the digital plane. Most employees will come aboard and will be oblivious of threats that target businesses, or the tricks hackers and scammers have up their sleeves.
A prime example is when your employees are surfing the web. They visit a website and all of a sudden, they got a popup saying they cannot view the page unless they download the latest Flash update. A few clicks later, something is blocking the computer’s security services and exposing the entire machine to more intrusive and more malicious programs.
Stop this from happening. You need to do everything in your power to train your employees about online safety and how to identify hidden security threats. Don’t just guess on how to keep your business safe, make sure it is safe. Bring in IT professionals to help train you and your team. Professionals can also answer questions and set your employees on the right track to keep your business secure. Implement a consistent training regimen. Regular training exercises are vital to a business’s security, as threats constantly evolve, and your employees need to stay ahead of the curve.
Always keep security in the back of your mind. As soon as you forget about it, that’s when the risk of leaking critical information is highest.
2. Don’t Connect to Unsecured, Public WiFi
According to a Spiceworks study, close to 61% of employees connect to unsecured WiFi networks when working remotely. This is a huge problem for businesses that have multiple remote employees, including ones that work from home or use company devices outside of their work location.
Public WiFi seems like a blessing, but it really isn’t. Connecting to unsecure, public WiFi is like leaving the front door of your home ajar, then telling everyone in town you’ll be gone for a week. You won’t know who will come in and snoop around, let alone steal anything or leave behind anything to spy on you later. What’s worse, hackers can set up fake hot spots that look like legitimate WiFi networks. Connect to one of these fake hot spots, you make it super easy for hackers to steal data going to and from your device.
Go ahead and discourage your employees from using unsecured, public WiFi networks. You can also take it one step further and prohibit company equipment from connecting to unsecure WiFi at all. Lastly, focus on endpoint security. Make sure your equipment is on the latest updates, have malware protection, local firewalls and even a VPN. The more layers of security, the safer your business will be.
3. Protect All of Your Data
One thing employees should never do is save personal or business data on an external drive and take it out of the office. This is a huge security concern, as hackers will target the drive for sensitive data including financial and customer information that they can use or sell on the dark web.
If your remote employees need access to company data, you need to have a method in place to let them do just that. Most businesses rely on a secure cloud network to allow employees to properly access data, save it and delete it if necessary. However, this isn’t the only way. This is a discussion to have with your IT department, so they can help determine what solution makes sense for your business and your security.
Conclusion
These 3 tips are great, but they work best when you combine all of them together. Help your employees develop a positive IT security mindset. Once you’ve done so, you won’t have to worry as much about your employees unintentionally leaking confidential information.
If you’re still unsure where to start, give Biztek Solutions a call. You don’t have to do this alone. Our team of experienced IT security professionals can help you starting from square one. Contact us today for more information by phone (951) 638-0502 or our online contact form.
