Chances Are, Your Employees Care More for Convenience Than Network Security

Security is a top concern for anyone that utilizes the Internet. The problem for businesses is that the average employee probably doesn’t care much for your security practices, and it can be challenging to get them to comply without upsetting them.

Employees tend not to follow security practices that they find inconvenient, unnecessary, or time-consuming. The issue here is that the best solutions are often designed to keep data secure, while also making it somewhat more difficult to access crucial accounts. A good example of how security is undermined by employee indifference can be seen in a Bring Your Own Device policy. While it might make it more difficult for hackers to access your data, your employees might not want to go through the process of setting up BYOD on their own devices, which can put your data at risk.

Ultimately, it becomes a question of freedom vs security. Your employees want to use their own mobile devices and be free to work how they want, but this cannot happen without sacrificing security oversight. Unfortunately, this is a point that you have to insist on if you want to ensure maximum security for your critical data. It’s your responsibility to make sure that your team is following proper best practices in order to facilitate the further functionality of your organization.

If your team tends to dodge following best practices, this is even more important and necessary. Many outside threats understand that your employees are likely the weakest link in your business’s security, making them big targets for the likes of hackers and scammers. Unlike security patches and updates, this is a vulnerability that won’t go away with a software update. You have to educate your staff on the following best practices:

• Regularly changing passwords: All of your employees should be using complex passwords, which include lower and upper-case letters, numbers, and symbols. Changing your passwords frequently is also important, but if you’re always changing to complex passwords, you’re sure to forget them once in a while. An enterprise-level password manager can be exceptionally beneficial to securely store and retrieve passwords when they’re needed.
• Stopping phishing scams: Employees need to know how to look for phishing scams that may hit their inbox. This includes educating your team members on how phishing scams work, and what the telltale signs are for them. k_Street Consulting, LLC can help your employees understand how best to avoid and detect phishing scams.
• Using two-factor authentication: Accounts that have access to important information need to be using secondary security features, like two-factor authentication, in order to best protect your data. This makes it more difficult for hackers to access accounts remotely. Many two-factor authentication procedures require physical access to devices, which makes it much more difficult for hackers to compromise an account.

If you think you’re at risk of hacking attacks due to lack of adherence to security measures, you should implement a Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution. With a firewall, antivirus, spam blocking, and content filtering solution, your business will experience minimal exposure to threats, and promptly eliminate those that do manage to get into your systems.

For more information about cybersecurity and other data security best practices, give k_Street Consulting, LLC a call at (202) 640-2737.