Strengthen Your Weakest Link Your Employees

You can have the best firewall, top of the line backup and disaster recovery device, custom anti-virus software and still lose everything. This is because you overlooked a major part of your security plan: your employees.When it comes to security, your employees are the most vulnerable access point for hackers.

Here are the top ways to reduce cybersecurity risk.

Password Policy:

Create and strictly enforce a universal password policy. Passwords should be complex, frequently changed and randomly generated. When creating a password policy, be sure to include a guideline for passwords. Hackers always count on users using meaningful words and dates, therefore your employees should never use any personal information to create passwords, especially if the information can be easily found on social profiles.

Instead passwords should be created using a random combination of letters with varying cases, numbers and symbols. Also, it is important that employees never use the same password for more than one account, this will protect your company in the event that one password is compromised.

Security Awareness Training:

It is important to train and test your employees regularly. Educate your employees on how to spot phishing attacks and test their knowledge of phishing. The only way to know for sure if your employees are able detect phishing attempts is to test them.

Contact your IT company and request phish testing. Phish testing is when your IT company periodically sends fake emails to your employees to see how they respond. If an employee falls for the phishing attempt, train them again. It is much safer to have them fall for the test than the real thing.

Mobile Device Policy:

It is crucial to establish a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy, because most likely all of your employees has a mobile phone. You can have the strongest security for your network, but can be left exposed if each of your employees are coming and going with smartphones.

Are your employees checking their emails on their mobile phones? Can they gain access to the network remotely? Cell phones and personal devices can be a vulnerable point without proper Mobile Device Management(MDM).

Update Your Software:

Make sure to regularly update your software with the latest security patches. If you delay updating your software you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to issues that have been discovered and addressed.

Invest in Your Security:

Cyber security is not an aspect of your business that you should cut cost on. Check your hardware, at the very least you should have a quality firewall and backup device. Invest in employee training and testing, regular security updates and patches, and maintaining a full/crisis breach plan.

Make sure you have done everything you can to strengthen the weakest point of your security, your employees. Contact the TNS Group today to discuss Security Awareness Training and security options for your business.

Categories: Managed Service Provider, MSP Blogs