Employee training is always something important that you need to keep in mind, but how often have you told your staff about digital security and how to stay safe on the internet? While that phrase itself sounds like something out of a cheesy commercial, it’s actually an incredibly serious topic that needs to be discussed and explained or else your business could suffer drastic losses.
If you fail to protect your business’s digital data and assets, then you’ll be forced to start a contingency plan in order to restore data that could either be stolen or corrupted, and it will become a public relations nightmare. No one wants to deal with the possibility of losing their company due to a virus or network attack, so here are a few tips that you absolutely have to teach your employees when it comes to digital safety.
Think your office computers are safe at night? Think again! (Source)
Learn what social engineering is
Social engineering is one of the most popular and common ways for someone to gain unauthorised access to your computers. It relies on human interaction as opposed to brute-forcing and is especially effective against people that don’t understand what social engineering is. Two common things to look out for are baiting attempts and phishing. Phishing is popular because it’s simple to fall for. Hackers usually set up fake websites that look identical to the real one and ask for your login information. Once you enter the details, the site returns an error, often kick you back to the legitimate page but the details you entered will be sent to the hackers to use.
To avoid social engineering attempts, make sure you teach your staff to never click strange links or respond to emails that aren’t from official sources. Even though anti-spam technology is sophisticated, it’s still not perfect and you need to use your own judgement in most cases.
Passwords, emails, customer data—nothing is safe when you’re a victim (Source)
Preparing your business for digital threats
Another method of protecting your data is via managed IT services for businesses. Manage IT services include a plethora of features, but the main thing that you should be concerned with is network security. By adding software and hardware firewalls and antivirus software, it’s possible to repel basic network attacks without much problem.
It also protects you against what’s known as a denial-of-service attack. This is important for businesses that regularly use cloud-based services, or offer their own services on their website. Denial-of-service attacks work by flooding your networks with random bits of data, effectively making it impossible for customers to access your databases for their services. This essentially shuts down your business temporarily and can have incredibly dire consequences if it’s not managed correctly. The best way to deal with these types of issues is to leave it up to professionals to help protect your business.
Whatever you do in business, make sure your employees are well aware of the digital threats that come with modern technology. With enough knowledge, it’s simple to keep your business safeguarded.
