Physical security is important for businesses – but cybersecurity is another beast entirely. The number of cyber-attacks skyrocketed in the pandemic as hackers targeted remote teams.
As well as being at risk within the office, many people working from home and other settings could potentially expose your systems through weak and unsecure wireless connections. Thereforeit is essential that you educate your team and protect your company from cyberattacks with a high-quality system.
You may have ID passes and codes at every door in the office – but do you have them for your virtual world as well?
Here are a few ways you can protect your business online.
Data security training for the team
You need to teach everyone in your team about data security. They should know how to spot a fraudulent email and how to build a secure password. You should teach your team about the dangers of revealing passwords to each other. They should change their passwords every month to something entirely different. Their passwords should not be the same, and they should store their passwords in a secure system.
Hold regular security training courses for your staff to remind them of the basic practices. You may need to hold refresher courses for those who are less aware of data security. Be sure to get your IT department involved so your team can hear from the professionals just how important online security and the protection of data is.
The foundation of your training should surround the severity of customer data getting into the wrong hands. It could mean your huge problems for your company and if there are signs of a data breach and illegal usage of private information, you should always get legal professionals involved .
Invest in good anti-virus protection
You need high-quality anti-virus software for your laptops, computer and computer database. Your employees should also protect their personal devices – especially if they are connected to their work laptop. A hacker could get into their personal device and find the password for their work system. It’s important to consider the network of devices and the weak links in your system.
If your team opt to use personal devices, it’s important that you take your employees through the right precautions. Do they have the right protection? Do they use a secure wireless connection? Are they at any risk to any harmful attackers? If there are any issues with this, it may be that you’ll have to enforce work laptops team wide. There’s no room for slip-ups!
Keep your connection secure
As previously stated, the connection your employees use a network that doesn’t belong to the office, it may not be secure. Currently, hackers can use open networks to hack in your system and take data. Remote working has not only normalised working from home but working from public spaces like coffee shops and libraries. Although this might be a nice change of scenery for your employee, this might be putting your company’s data at risk- especially if they’re using a work laptop.
You should educate your employees about the dangers of using public connections and hotspots. They should try to only use private network connections that are protected by a password. Keep your wireless connection secure and change the password from the original one on the box.
Set password requirements
You need to change the passwords for the company accounts and software on a regular basis. These passwords should include uppercase, lowercase, symbols and numbers. Try to find random passwords – such as the generated ones on Apple devices. You should not have a system for your passwords, such as only changing the number at the end of the word – cyberattacks can easily crack this code and get into your system.
Dispose of data in a safe way
You need to protect company data from the moment you receive it to when you dispose of it. If you have paper copies of data, they should be shredded within your office premises. However, strip shedding can be put back together so cross-cut or micro-cut.
When it comes to online data, you should always inform your clients that their private data will only be kept for a certain amount of time. After that, it should be disposed of, especially if an employee leaves the company. There are now strict GDPR regulations which everyone should be made aware of and should be regularly put into practice.
Suffering from a data breach and losing your client’s private information could mean detrimental things for your business. It’s important that you invest in the best precautions and keep your team informed and education to avoid any accidently slip-ups. Do everything you can to keep your company safe in the online and physical world.
