4 Tips to Protect Against Your Company's Biggest Security Risk: Its Employees

by Stephanie Faris on Monday, June 25, 2018 11:30

Data security is serious business for today's companies, with the average data breach costing $3.5 million. Even worse, a company that suffers a breach is 27 percent likely to fall victim again within two years, bringing an additional cost of between $1.1 million and $3.8 million. Even if your business is a small startup, you can't assume criminals won't touch you.

To battle data breaches, businesses spend top dollar for technology to protect their technology. Antivirus software and firewalls can help but that will only go so far. In a survey, executives revealed that employee negligence was a top cause of security breaches. This can include everything from careless disposal of items to creating easy-to-guess passwords. Here are four tips that can help you keep your business safe, whether you have three employees or 300.

Train Employees

Although it's no guarantee, employee training can go a long way in helping form good technology habits. This type of training doesn't have to be boring. Several companies have found a way to create engaging training sessions that work for everyone from the top CEO to the company interns. Come up with a training program that gets the information across without being too technical for your less techie staff members.

Set Strict Password Requirements

A weak password can put your information at risk, since hackers can easily guess it using algorithms. You can set policies at the server level that force employees to choose complex passwords, incorporating rules like requiring at least one number, one uppercase letter, and one special character along with the typical length minimums. You should also set restrictions on password history, meaning that employees shouldn't be allowed to reuse the same password more than once or twice.

Protect Mobile Devices

Laptops and mobile devices are especially vulnerable since they spend most of their time outside of your walls. If one of those items is lost or stolen, the data residing on them could easily be compromised by a savvy criminal. Require that all devices used to transact business be protected with a keycode. You should also set up protection on each device and ensure that you can wipe it remotely if it is reported lost.

Create a Surplus Policy

When your equipment reaches its end of life, what do you do with it? If you're like many businesses, you either donate it or recycle it. Unfortunately, this leaves your data vulnerable. Every hard drive can be filled with sensitive data, such as customer financial information, names and addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, and medical histories. Your customers trust you to keep that data safe. It's important to create a surplus policy that requires your team members to destroy hard drives before disposing of old equipment to keep your business safe.

You don't have to leave your business's data security to chance. National Computer Warehouse Services offers hard drive destruction services. We use a two-step process to first wipe everything on the drive, followed by shredding it. Our new onsite hard drive shredder can even come to your location, where we can destroy your drives at your own convenience. Contact us to learn more about our services.