The fact that you have employees means that some of them frequently handle extremely sensitive business data and files, both inside and beyond the perimeter of your office network. With the fact that no business is immune to cyber threats today, this can be a significant cause of concern to most.
A data breach is incredibly negative for an organisation and can significantly harm its finances and reputation. In times like this, you simply can’t dwell on handling cybersecurity breaches on your own without involving your staff. This can still endanger your business in the future. Instead, you should introduce stringent data security measures to every employee, and here are five ways to go about it.
Create A Data Handling Policy For Your Staff
Discuss with cybersecurity experts and outline a policy for your employees regarding secure data handling. Ensure that the entire staff is fully aware of and obeys it religiously, even when working remotely. Staff training and awareness are essential when ensuring policy compliance. A good place to start in terms of making your employees aware of any threats is by showing them F5’s WAAP glossary as it outlines the potential threats facing your business and any web applications you may use, as well as why these threats can be detrimental to your operations, reputation, and customer retention rate.
The data handling policy should cover user access control, protection, and disposal. Several UK businesses cite the significant causes of cybersecurity incidents as their employees’ negligence in following the corporation’s data protection policies. Therefore, you’ll need to enforce these policies without fail rigidly.
Carry Out A Comprehensive Data Security Assessment
When you carry out a comprehensive data security risk assessment, you will be able to identify all the areas where sensitive data in your company may be at risk. The team carrying out the risk assessment would need to consider the data housed in your office premises, taken off-site, stored on the cloud and the data on employees’ devices. You can find quality-rated providers of IT support in London to carry out this procedure for you.
Train Employees to Avoid Phishing Attacks
Teach your employees how to detect phishing emails and how not to share essential data with any third party. An IT company in London is available to help employees securely maintain their databases.
Orange County businesses are often investing in employee education so their system would run smoother. They often hire IT support in Irvine California to train and teach their staff about all things data security. From avoiding phishing attacks to how to handle sensitive data, this is an essential aspect of ensuring that your staff knows what they are dealing with.
Keep Up to Date on Data Security Measures
You can subscribe your company to relevant newsletters and journals concerning data security to help your HR team stay updated on data security. Thanks to these IT support London companies, you can avoid any legal implications of data compromise.
Making Network Security Highly Critical
Over one-third of remote workers use unsecured wireless networks like public Wi-Fi hotspots for work. This isn’t advisable as files, emails, and other pieces of sensitive data could easily be intercepted when using such an unsecured internet connection for work. Therefore, if your staff is working on a large amount of sensitive data, ensure they are connected to a secure network from the office. If possible, provide them with a solid virtual private network (VPN) connection. Also, ensure that your staff’s work devices are protected with antivirus software and a good network firewall.
Conclusion
Owning and operating a business is a challenging endeavour. As a business owner, if you experience even the slightest lack of cybersecurity from any part of the company, it will cost you more than money to repair everything. Therefore, employ the above steps to ensure all data security is enforced and followed.