The digital age has brought about a wealth of benefits for businesses. Communication is quicker than ever, automation helps to streamline processes, and social connectivity has never been easier. That’s only a small sample of the positives.
On the other hand, there are disadvantages that also come along for the ride with digital. This is particularly evident when it comes to security and keeping employees safe online.
Due to how business is conducted over the Internet, security threats have never been more prevalent than they are right now. Cyberattacks are continuing to grow in volume and sophistication, and this is catching out a greater percentage of people – and businesses – on a day-to-day basis.
To ensure your company doesn’t suffer the same fate, this article will explore the ways you can keep employees safe on the Internet.
Teach them a lesson
No, this doesn’t mean you should infiltrate their desktops or smartphones and show them their security lapses in a vindictive manner. What it does mean, however, is you should educate your employees about the basics of safety.
This lesson can be done internally or via specialist security training. The latter will be more effective, but it’s not essential. Although when you conduct the lesson on your own, there are a couple of pointers to remember.
Firstly, avoid trying to bombard employees with information. While it’s essential they learn all they can about security, this should be spread out across multiple lessons. Speaking of which, these lessons should be a regular occurrence – there’s no point only doing a block of lessons and then moving on. Not only do you have to keep security measures fresh in the minds of workers, but you also have to educate about new threats that crop up.
Watch out for obvious signs
As part of your educational endeavours, you should teach employees about all the obvious signs that could catch them out. You might spend countless hours teaching about the subject. You may even have the best security system in place. With that said, it only takes one erroneous click on a malicious URL link to spoil the party. If an employee is caught out by a phishing email, for example, this could open the door for attackers to gain access to all your business details.
To limit such a problem, here are a few points to look out for:
• Social engineering:
Attackers will often target unsuspecting people with blogs, social media, and links. Consequently, you have to teach employees to watch out for clicking on anything sent their way from unknown sources
• Fake URLs:
• Smarter passwords:
CASB
Cloud Access Security Broker, known in its abbreviated form CASB, is a tool that is increasingly growing in reputation. This is falling in line with the popularity of company’s utilising the cloud. As more businesses adopt the cloud into their day-to-day operations, the growth extends towards keeping their data safe on this system. Businesses are using this alongside other preventative measures to keep employees safe online.
After all, one question continued to be asked: Just how secure is the cloud? While this can depend on a number of factors – including the provider you select – the cloud is undoubtedly helped security wise by employing a CASB. This platform allows you to keep track of your employees and all the programs, files data, and apps they are using. All of this helpswith encryption, data loss prevention, and more.
If you’ve done research into this aspect of security, you might be wondering about another question: Doesn’t VPN do the same job? In theory, it works in a similar manner. However, there are a number of disadvantages. For instance, VPN connections can have problems with latency and may even be unstable to use. Additionally, employees will look to use the most efficient system to get their work done – which can be with unsanctioned apps and non-corporate devices.
This is when CASBs step in. The headache of unmanaged devices utilising the cloud is over. Now, your IT department can implement a CASB for a range of cloud-related security functions that work across all platforms – yet are still conveniently managed via a single access point.
All of the tips above aim to keep your employees safe online – however it is prudent to note that this isn’t an exhaustive list. They should be used in conjunction with other preveantive measures.