9 Cyber Security Best Practices That Every Employee Should Follow

Even with an immense advancement in science and technology, all is not rosy and secure in the cyber world. With the increase in cyber-attacks throughout the world, it is extremely important to work on every aspect to make it sound and secure for our businesses. It is widely seen that a single malicious activity sometimes results in causing great losses to the companies.

These losses are not just monetary but also related to the decline in rapport in the market. No business, small or midsize, will ever want such consequences, and thus it increases the need for good cybersecurity practices within organizations.

An employee is the most important unit of an organization. Therefore, the organization needs to have each employee trained properly to follow good cybersecurity practices. Every company nowadays is investing in employee education to build a strong foundation for the organization.

However, in the case of a cyberattack, it is not just the scammer executing the attack but also the employee’s ignorance that can bring about great losses. In this way, you cannot expect your employees to follow the best practices in the cyber world to remain secure until you invest in training them for the same.

Through this piece, we will explore the same and develop a deeper understanding of some of the best practices that will help every employee bring to the table the best security practices in the cybersecurity. Let us quickly dive in and build knowledge of those mentioned above:

Motivate your employee to be cautious while clicking:

It can be seen that the rate of phishing is increasing throughout the globe. Both the small and midsize businesses face a threat from the scammers, due to which they are taking steps to keep them safe in cyberspace. In this regard, companies must work on their employees to provide them with proper guidance to tackle such attacks. Therefore, the employees should be trained in the basics, including the practices such as not to click unnecessarily on the frequently targeted email pop-ups or respond in any manner to any such executed attack. The employees of a particular company should respond responsibly as they are considered the most valuable asset of any organization. All the company members should take necessary precautions in handling such attachments and links and emails from not-so-trustworthy sources as they can easily gain access to the company’s network and confidential information. Therefore, one of the most important rules is to train employees in the basic rule of not entering any confidential information on such platforms.

Strong passwords for the win!:

It may look like the most basic rule to follow and thereby the most avoided one, but it is very important not to overlook this one. The company needs to have employees who take their passwords seriously. Not to forget, cyber attackers have been using this strategy to infiltrate the system by finding loopholes in the passwords. As obvious as it may sound, a simple password is very easy to figure out, and it is seen that these users with simple passwords often fall prey to these scammers. The companies are therefore investing in their employees to implement secure password practices.

Secure Wifi networks instead of open Wifi sources:

The network channel of a company is usually well-knitted and thus considered safe. It should be in the practice of employees to train accordingly, and thus operating through a safe network is important from the security point of view. Public networks can fall prey to these cyber attackers and thus are often ignored by the big and mid-sized companies as it is seen that the public network offers very limited features that make it an even easier spot for the scammers. But with the close network that offers reliability and trustworthiness, it becomes difficult for cybercriminals to seep into the company’s system. This way, you can keep the user data containing sensitive information extremely safe and sound with you.

Ensuring the limited sharing of data:

Another important feature includes careful sharing of data by the employees, including a consortium of private and sensitive information. This information includes all the photos, videos, and content that you share on social media. The employees should remain cautious regarding oversharing of information, including the company’s details that can come up as really fatal in terms of money and reputation. The hackers can take up this information in bits and pieces and adjoin it to use it in their favor. The employees should know about employing all the possible security measures to listen to the risk factor. It should be among their practices to regularly check the nature of the content they are uploading on behalf of the company. If you fail as an employee to follow these ethics, you can certainly fall prey to hackers.

Ensuring security through SSL Certificate:

As the companies throughout the globe are facing the challenge related to security, it is the need of the hour to employ such tools that can minimize security-related threats in the cyber world. Thus the employees should have a habit of promoting security within the culture of the company. In this way, the SSL certificate has emerged and been adopted by small and midsize companies to provide a secure basis and win customer trust. It ensures encryption of in-transit data between the web browser and client-server, preventing Man-In-The-Middle (MitM) and sniffing attacks. Today, a wide variety of SSL certificates like wildcard SSL certificate, single-domain standard SSL certificates, multi-domain SSL certificates are utilized by companies to keep themselves secure in the cyber world. However, if you intend to expand your business in the future, buying a cheap wildcard SSL certificate is recommended, as it secures your chosen primary domain and multiple first-level subdomains.

Have good communication with the IT department of the company:

It is seen that the internal cybersecurity team or IT department of the company is the first one to be approached in case of a breach. Therefore, every employee individually should establish closed communication with the company’s IT team to establish a secure environment around it. This way, the employee can actively keep the cyber attackers at bay and handle the mischief better. Furthermore, every employee must be trained in reporting or filing a complaint in case of any breach so that the cybersecurity team can take action against the hackers. The IT team may not be aware of the varied types of threats lingering in the cyber world, but they depend on you to be the first to function as an informant and save the company from chaos. One can even report it to the FBI to take strict action against cybercriminals.

Proper data backup to ensure security:

One of the most important components to be kept in mind of employees should be proper data backup of the cardinal information of the company. It may appear as a simple step but is extremely crucial to the security of the company. As simple as it may sound, a backup is a great solution to business information security. As cyber-attacks are at their peak all through the globe, it is a need of the hour to create a proper and efficient backup to tackle such situations. Furthermore, proper backups created timely by the company, and its employees keep the attackers away from causing any loss to the reputation or sensitive data of the company; it is therefore suggested that to develop the habit of backup creation among the employees.

Regular Training of the employees in cybersecurity:

The employees need to be cautious and properly trained in recent technologies related to cybersecurity. In this way, all the companies, either big or midsize, are investing in employee training and education. In addition, various courses are also provided to create awareness among employees related to cybersecurity that can help them in case of an attack.

 Pay attention to the security software updates:

It is seen that despite following the above-said steps, the companies often fall into the trap of cyber attackers. Thus, you can train your employees to keep a check on security software by taking stringent actions. As the security service providers regularly come up with advance updates that can keep cyber attackers in check, it is the responsibility of the employees to turn on the auto-updates that can function on their behalf even if they can forget to keep them updated in turn of software.

Conclusion:

The overall impact of the steps mentioned above to ensure cybersecurity through employees is very high. The employees need to be aware of all kinds of risks that are there in cyberspace. Through the help of an amalgamation of technology and employee education, a company can easily obtain equilibrium of all the security measures beneficial for it.

By employing simple measures such as SSL certificates, organizing training and workshops for employees, this issue of cybersecurity can easily be resolved. You can peruse various SSL certs available in the market, such as AlphaSSL, Comodo Positive SSL certificate, etc. As a user shares with you different forms of sensitive information like email ids, phone numbers, bank account details, credit, and debit card information, you must keep them safe. With this, a company can step up its security game and climb up the stairs of success.