Page 53 - Cyber Warnings

Five tips for educating your employees on cyber security

Are you watching your employees closely enough?

You may be surprised to know that your main concern when it comes to cyber security is not
some external threat, but the people who surround you on a daily basis. Yes, it’s your
employees that you really need to worry about, not some hackers in a garage in Idaho. That's
not to say that your staff have an agenda to bring your company down (or at least, let's hope
not). It's just that human error and carelessness while doing everyday tasks are the main
causes of business security breaches.

Whether it's leaving their laptops and mobile devices lying around in public places, storing data
in insecure locations, or failing to protect sensitive information and networks with effective
passwords, there are numerous ways in which your employees can leave your business
vulnerable to attack.

How can security threats be avoided?

Don't lose heart – with the right approach, the people who work for you can be transformed from
your greatest weakness to your greatest strength in combating malicious cyber attacks.

The first thing you need to do is ensure that you have a rigorous IT security policy in place. This
policy should be thorough enough to cover all realistic eventualities, updated regularly to take
into account newly emerging threats, and contain a clear step-by-step plan for responding to
any security issues that arise.

Once you've implemented this, you need to make sure your employees understand what the
risks are, and the scale of impact they can have.

To put it in language they'll understand, the costs of recovering from a cyber security issue can
potentially be enough to put you out of business – which means no more jobs.

Your staff may be more than willing to follow your security policy, but if it's not drummed into
them on a regular basis, they will simply get caught up with all the other important things they
have to keep track of to do their jobs effectively.

This means that you'll not only need to educate your staff on the risks and best practices to
avoid them, but you'll need to constantly remind them of their duty to keep your company safe,
and the ways in which they can do so.

To help you out, we've put together our top five tips to keep your employees up to speed on
cyber security:

53 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – June 2017 Edition
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