Your Employees Might Be Your Greatest Security Risk

Your employees might be putting your business at risk, even if they don’t know it yet. Most companies feel this frustration, and they want their employees to prioritize cybersecurity in the same way administrators and security staff do. This frustration is something that can be challenged and addressed… with the right solutions and policies, of course.

Employees Just Don’t Care

The reality is that some employees just don’t care about your network security, and this poses a threat to your business.

Most of the time, this negligence is not necessarily malicious. Sometimes employees simply don’t know what is expected to keep a network secure, either because they’re not paying attention or because they don’t understand what you’re asking them to do. If your employees are uninformed, they will make poor choices and put your business at risk.

If you don’t address employee negligence early enough, you are actively putting your company in harm’s way.

Insider Threats Exist

There’s also the possibility that an employee is actively sabotaging your business.

Admittedly, this is a rare occurrence, but the possibility does exist, and you have to acknowledge it. Sometimes employees will undermine your business and knowingly leak sensitive data, share information with competitors, or steal intellectual property for their own purposes. Unless you’re monitoring your employees and their accounts, you might never notice this activity—not until it’s too late to do anything about it.

If you’re not limiting who can access specific types of information, and you’re not monitoring it as well, then you’re going to have a bad time.

How to Address These Issues

There are two ways you can keep these security challenges from negatively impacting your business.

For starters, you can limit which employees have access to sensitive information. Not only does this cut out the possibility that an insider does something harmful with it, but it also removes the option for employees to accidentally mess with the data. You can combine access control with routine testing, training policies, password refreshes, and phishing training to create a comprehensive information security plan.

This is the ultimate way to keep employees from playing the “I didn’t know” card the next time they do something dumb with your data.

Learn More Today

Does your business need help with security?

SMBs have it hard, as they might not have an in-house IT department they can turn to for all their security questions and needs. But with the right managed service provider (read: Horne & Benik) on your side, you can address most any security issue that your business might face. We can equip your business with the tools, resources, and expertise it needs to make security a top priority.

Learn more by calling us at (603) 499-4400.