Enormous amounts of data are collected and stored by companies. To succeed, companies have to trust their employees. But, even the best employees in your company can leave your company vulnerable to cyberattacks and performing mistakes.
Businesses focus on so much private data, from form filling to handling customers’ credit card information. A minute mistake from any employee can lead the company to become vulnerable and prey to bad online actors. Thus, CISOs or CSOs need to educate employees about the mistakes they can make and how to get rid of them in time.
According to a survey, The Human Factor in IT Security: How Employees are Making Businesses Vulnerable from Within, conducted by Kaspersky, more than half of the people surveyed believe that carelessness, lack of knowledge, or malice on the part of an employee can lead to a cyberattack.
As technology has transformed, cybersecurity threats are also continuously evolving. So companies have to stay up-to-date on the latest threats and take necessary steps to inform all the employees in companies.
Companies should focus on possible mistakes that an employee can make and educate them to avoid such situations.
Here are some cybersecurity awareness tips for employees that the company can educate them or the employees themselves can get educated.
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Think Twice Before You Click
As this is one of the critical Cybersecurity email tips, employees can follow it regularly to keep the data safe. Employees must be cautious of the unknown links they get through messages, emails, or other web pages while visiting that are not secure enough.
To gain access to the data, the most common method used by hackers is Clickjacking. Do not click on these malicious links. If one does so, the company can lose hefty amounts and affect the employees and the company in many other ways.
Links in emails in the form of bank statements, password recovery emails, etc., are the popular methods used by frauds to trick employees and gain business information. These links may lead to fake sites similar to the real ones. Then, the hackers will ask you to provide personal information to gain access to your account using the same.
Have a Strong and Varied Password
This is another essential cybersecurity tip for employees. Having the same password for multiple platforms may be easy to use and remember, but it makes your account insecure and vulnerable. It would be best if you had different passwords for all your accounts on all platforms. Doing this practice, even if a company where hackers have access to one of your account credentials or you have an account breached, these credentials will not work on other websites.
Also, employees must use strong passwords for all their accounts, which are essential for online security.
Strong passwords:
- It should have at least 16 characters
- It should contain symbols, mixed letters, and numbers
- Avoid using words, especially proper nouns
- Should not include Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
-
Should not re-use
Set up Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Generally, one needs only to use an ID and password to access your account. But the MFA service allows you to add extra layers of security. The MFA process also includes the standard method of using passwords for online verification. In addition, it uses a password, and another authentication method, such as a fingerprint, a code, or OTP.
While logging in, with this method, you will be asked to enter more than two credentials. As it will make it more difficult for hackers to access your data, it keeps your account more secure. This is another essential cybersecurity measure that all employees must take.
Update Systems Always
Employees must keep their systems updated continuously, keeping the browsers, operating systems, and software updated. This is the most critical cybersecurity measure in the workplace for employees. If the organization is using firewalls for security purposes, employees should update them, also. The older your system and its configurations are, the longer the attackers must find and exploit all the weaknesses. Updating them will prevent hackers from using them for enough time until new updates.
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Keep a Secure Backup of all Critical Data
The backup solution is the best measure to keep business and personal information safe. Ransomware is known as one of the biggest threats to data. Ransomware, the malware, encrypts systems, files, and networks of victims. A ransomware attack can eradicate a business and bring it to its knees.
Permanent loss of data can happen due to ransomware attacks. Because of this, employees should have the practice of maintaining a backup solution for all the critical data using a cloud or physical hard drive. The cloud backup can create a copy of your data on a server and host this vital data in another separate location. Physical backups should be kept in a safe, secure place after encrypting. Employees should take extra care, and they should not leave the storage devices lying around in open places. Utilizing these methods, the backed data can be restored in case of any data loss or theft.
Practice Data Protection and Encryption
Organizations have to ensure that their employees do not divulge any of the information to the public and take precautions when communicating or sharing sensitive information online. Individuals also should avoid sharing personally identifiable data such as their credit card details when answering an unsolicited phone call, email, or text message. It is essential to practice the same caution in the workplace.
Hackers are ingenious in their methods of deception. They can pose as authoritative figures like government officials or upper management to trick employees into divulging sensitive information, such as login credentials. Therefore, employees need to take extreme caution when communicating sensitive information by double-checking the legitimacy of requests and encrypting data before sending it so that the intended receiver can only access the data with the help of a decryption key.
Summing Up
Proper awareness can help employees strengthen the breach vulnerabilities of companies. Remember, having just one click on a corrupt link could let in a hacker. One failure in fixing a flaw quickly makes companies vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Cybersecurity offices should find time to educate all employees on how to avoid cybersecurity risks and become vulnerable. Practicing these cybersecurity measures could be the difference between a secured company and one that a hacker might target.
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