How to Turn a Security Risk into a Security Solution

Let’s face it; the office isn’t the most engaging place at all times. Repetitive tasks can make attention to detail difficult to maintain. While this might throw a wrench into operational plans, it’s not the end of the world. A major threat like ransomware, on the other hand, could be a business-ender. When a lack of engagement meets security issues, you create a whole other monster that could strike your business when you least expect it.

What Threats?
We’re talking about how your employees may disregard network security because they don’t see it as part of their job descriptions or duties. They have enough to worry about without thinking about how a nasty virus or ransomware could harm your organization’s digital assets. More often than not, there is nothing malicious in your employees’ actions, and they just don’t see that they have a role to play in cybersecurity.

This is very much not a good thing, especially considering that over 90 percent of cyberattacks leverage spear phishing to take advantage of the targeted user.

How to Prepare Your Employees
If your employees don’t know how important it is for them to remain on the ball, you need to educate them. By expressing just how crucial it is for everyone to keep the network secure, you can help motivate them to keep this security in mind.

Our best advice is to keep it simple. Businesses that are targeted by a cyberattack are prone to shutting down relatively soon after being breached. Therefore, if your business is left vulnerable, each of your employees is at risk of losing their job. Understanding this fact will give your employees the motivation to diligently defend against threats of all kinds.

How Your Employees Can Help
While your employees can be a source of major risk, they can also be one of your greatest security assets if they know what to look for and how to conduct themselves. What follows are a few simple basics that can help preserve your organization's security.

Threat Awareness and Proactive Measures - The key to protecting your business is to act before an issue arises and ensuring that your employees can spot a potential threat while you still have the opportunity to mitigate it.

Web and Email Practices - Implementing certain solutions that help to protect a user’s browsing and their inbox is a must in today’s day and age, as is educating your employees how to augment those solutions with their own behaviors.

Password Policies - How stringent are your password requirements? In order to access your business’ information, your employees should need to authenticate that it is indeed them who is accessing their account, with a password that fits the best practices that are recommended for these credentials.

Horne & Benik can assist you in implementing these policies and other crucial protections to help make sure that your business is as well-protected as possible -- and by proxy, your reputation. Reach out to us at (603) 499-4400 to get started.