While companies implement several security measures to protect their IT systems from external attacks, managers often overlook the main risk of security breaches: employees.
Through lack of awareness about the risks or lack of caution, your employees can put your business at risk. A good security strategy is not limited to technical choices. Processes and teams must work together to avoid security breaches.
Educate your employees about good data security practices.
Because of recent measure regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19), your employees work remotely for a certain period. Do not underestimate they will suddenly have to work out of the comfortable and secure environment you have designed for your company; cybercriminals or hackers use social engineering systems to manipulate your employees and achieve their ends. Social engineering is a set of methods used by ill-intentioned people to take advantage of the lack of trust and misuse of users in order to break into your system.
So make sure you raise awareness among your employees. You can, on the one hand, do exercises to test their knowledge in terms of security and data protection. On the other hand, think of setting up an alert process that will be explained to each person in contact with your company’s data. Users must also learn to handle all sensitive requests carefully. In addition, most employees admit to regularly visiting non-business sites from devices owned by the company. Consider deploying access filters to external applications and sites to limit the risks.
Set secure passwords to limit security breaches.
A weak password alone is a risk. It’s the weakest link in your defense. It is a means of authenticating each person who accesses your data. It is more and more frequent to have to compose a password that includes numbers, letters, special characters, etc. So why not you? What is the status of your password policy? What are the best practices for setting up a good password? ->links to external content https://www.howtogeek.com/195430/how-to-create-a-strong-password-and-remember-it/
Set up an access rights management policy.
More than two thirds of a company’s employees have access to data for which they have no legitimate use. Indeed, this loophole is particularly dangerous if employee accounts are maliciously attacked. The hacker would then have access to many personal or sensitive data.
Of course, sharing information is the key to effective collaboration between different departments within your company. But how far can you go? You need to define an access rights management policy. To do this, the first step is to classify user profiles. Then, it is up to you to decide which profile has access to specific datas.
Secure your employees’ mobile terminals
A lost computer is not just a tool left on a subway train. It is also personal, and potentially sensitive, data that is out there and could be in the wrong hands. Computer, tablet, smartphone– it happens often enough to worry about it. Always ensure those nomadic devices are using an antivirus solution, like NOD32 Antivirus, that is up to date.
On the IT side, you can use data encryption for your backup solutions so that your data is protected everywhere. On the user side, you need to make them aware that they should never lend their device to a third party. Of course, they must also inform you immediately if a device is lost or stolen so that you can limit security breaches.
At PIXS, we attach great importance to the protection of personal data, both thanks to our software solutions that meets the requirements of the GDPR, but also thanks to a high level of awareness and very advanced processes we do follow internally.