With the ever-increasing threat of cybercrime, many Australian businesses have implemented effective systems and software to help prevent attacks. However, often the threat originates from within a business if your employees lack awareness or are negligent in their cyber security practices.
We’ve put together 10 Tips for Educating Employees about cyber security to protect your business and help make your employees a bit more cyber smart.
10 Tips for Educating Employees about Cyber Security
1. Create and communicate clear-cut IT security policies and processes
Don’t assume that even though you’ve invested in cyber security technology or put together an IT strategy that every threat will be stopped. Social engineering is a bit part of the cyber-criminals weapons and if the correct security policies and processes aren’t in place you could be caught out.
2. Test employees security knowledge
The best way to check if your staff is aware of scams and threats is to test them.
3. Require complex passwords that must be changed regularly
We all know password best practice but are we implementing it? No pets’ names or children’s names followed by 123! And these days it’s prudent to implement two-step verification on all login processes.
4. Teach employees about Phishing scams
It’s human nature for us to be trusting but phishing scams should be teaching us the opposite. You need to make your staff aware of the threats, what they look like and how to protect themselves.
5. Make sure you’ve got good backups in place
Having good and easily recoverable backups in place is the number one fallback if you get a ransomware infection, if you already have them, make sure they are tested and working before you find out too late.
6. Use email SPAM and internet web filters
Effective email SPAM and internet web filters are the easiest way to stop many of the threats reaching your staff’s email account or allowing people to go to parts of the internet where they shouldn’t be going.
7. Keep your systems patched with the latest security updates
Computer systems need patches often, so make sure it’s being done with the latest security updates which can be conducted with outsourced IT support.
8. Protect your mobile devices
Mobile devices now contain as much critical business information as your computers but yet so many businesses don’t protect them in case they are lost or stolen. Mobile security is particularly critical in 2021 with so many staff working remotely.
9. Keep your staff up to date with the latest cyber threat news
Staff are your businesses’ cyber security guards, the last line of defence but if we don’t provide them with the latest types of threats and email scam news how do they know what to look out for?
10. Select a trusted IT partner
If you’re in any doubt about how to protect your business, you should talk to a company offering IT support for business that can help. Gone are the days of ‘it will never happen to us’.
None of the tips above individually can effectively prevent a cyber attack on your business, but taken collectively and by educating your employees, these can help prevent things that are preventable.
Call us today on 1300 478 738 or email info@suretyit.com.au to discuss your requirements.
