Cyber-attacks are becoming increasingly frequent in the workplace. Companies that deal with a lot of employee and customer data are facing more data breaches as the years go on, due to our modern reliance on technology. Without experts controlling our internal computer systems, companies are more likely to experience data breaches and attacks. Thankfully, there are many ways to prevent these attacks and keep company data safe.
Identify The Problem Areas
The first step in finding a solution is to identify the existing problem areas you have. If your company has had experience with previous cyber-attacks or data breaches, is there still a record of that attack/breach and how it was handled? These problems could be anything from a file being shared to the wrong people to your company website being hacked.
Protect Your Employees While They’re Online
When your employees are online, they’re at their most vulnerable. Train your employees to be safer and savvier when they’re browsing at work. Provide ongoing support and guidance, reminders and refresher training for anyone who feels they need it, and make sure you have a good cyber security system in place to protect them.
Make Ad Blockers Mandatory
Pop-ups and ads are the downfall of many pieces of technology, because so many of these internet menaces carry viruses. Luckily, with the right virus protection and pop-up/ad blockers, you can protect your information.
Improve Password Security
Ensure that each of your employees who has a company account or uses their own laptop at work has a decent password. Passwords should be more than 8 characters, using numbers and letters, as well as at least one capital letter.
Restrict Access
Not all of your staff members need access to every section of your internal system. By restricting access, you are ensuring that security breaches don’t happen because an untrained or underqualified staff member got into the wrong area by chance.
Use Physical Security
Though security breaches typically happen through computers these days, that doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility of someone physically breaking in to your establishment and stealing information. Physical security can help to prevent this.
Do Not Allow Your Staff To Secure Information Home
Depending on the type of business you run, your staff members may take their work home with them or use a personal laptop to carry around information. If your staff members are taking work home with them, it shouldn’t be anything that has any sensitive data.
Provide Safe Working
If you are happy for your employees to have a more flexible work style, then you should be providing any hardware and software that they need to ensure that files are encrypted, protected, and extremely difficult to breach.
Understand The Need To Destroy Data
5 years is typically a good time to hold data. At that point, as long as it is no longer needed or relevant, that data should be properly destroyed – whether it’s on paper or a computer file.
Talk To Your Employees
The friendlier you are with your employees, the more likely they are to listen to you and your concerns about data breaches, and they may even offer some insightful solutions, too.
At Greenaway, you may think we just talk about shredding. But honestly, we know that we are just one small piece in the fight against hackers and scammers. Shredding your physical documentation is a really important part of keeping your data safe, as this is the element most people forget – making it a common target for data thieves. If you would like to know more about how to keep your documents secure and dispose of them safely, just get in touch with the team today.
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