Over the last few years, data breaches have become quite common. For any business, their employees are their first layer of defense. But contrary to what businesses believe, here are some shocking results of the survey conducted by Ipswitch File Transfer over 200 IT practitioners:
- 84% employees use their personal emails to send confidential data
- 50% respondents accepted exposing company data by uploading it to a cloud-based service.
- More than 50% managers lacked the visibility to transfer data within their business.
- Also 35% accepted that they give priority to their personal accounts over corporate ones when it comes to choose a strong password.
These shocking results makes it must for businesses to educate their employees about the must follow cyber security tips in order to stay safe from breaches. The article in short will mention some important cyber security tips to keep your employees safe:
- Educate them about phishing attacks:
The most common form of a phishing scam is via email. Do you know these cyber criminals can make a hell lot of damage just via your email by getting the confidential information or installing any malicious software on your system. These phishing emails look quite similar to normal ones but in reality, are extremely harmful for you. To stay protected from them, you must educate or train them to identify fake emails. In general an authenticate email will come from people known to them, pass the anti-virus tests, not contain unusual grammatical errors and unbelievable discounts.
- Eliminate bad password habits:
Moreover, make your employees get rid of those poor password habits. The best recommendation is to set auto password policies on systems. Additionally, make your employees acquainted with poor password policies. Explain to them how poor passwords can make them more likely to get hacked. Below are some tips here:
- Deploy strict password policies, passwords like 12345678 must not be allowed. Choosing easy passwords can make it easy for hackers to get access. Therefore they must choose a password which is strong and not easy to guess.
- Force your employees to change their password on regular intervals. How many times do you change your work email password? Ask your employees to keep changing their passwords on regular intervals in order to stay safe.
- Say strict no to share passwords with anyone. Make sure they are not sharing their passwords with anyone. Sharing passwords has become a synonym of trust nowadays but in reality, it makes you more vulnerable to attacks.
- Implement two-factor authentication (2FA) to add up security. Two-factor authentication is a healthy process of authentication that requires users to go through more than single layer of authentication. Thus reduces the chances of getting hacked.
3.Train employees about BYOD and make strict policies:
Even after data breaches making headlines every week, most of the companies still don’t have any policies around BYOD (Bring your own device). While adoption of BYOD makes sense thanks to the convenience and flexibility it brings along, it can also increase the chances of getting attacked in the absence of strict policies. You must set policies around:
- Make sure only eligible people can make use of BYOD process.
- Employees must get management approval before using BYOD approach.
- Decide if you want data and app or device restriction.
- Restrict downloading of unauthorized software:
Do you know most of the system attacks are disguised as the free web programs that employees download and in turn get hacked. Restrict your employees from downloading any potential threat of this kind onto system or network devices. You can also lock down the enterprise system.
- Conduct proper training:
Lastly, make sure to educate your employees about why you are deploying these policies. If possible, show them some case studies too. Let them know the critical consequences of data or accounts getting hacked.
No matter how secure you are, hackers can catch you. Deploying these policies across your organization will keep them secure.
