Keyboard Warriors: Why Your Employees Are The Best Defense Against Security Threats

Every aspect of your company is as important as the other, from the website to your products, from your clients to your employees. Your employees, obviously, require a lot of nurturing and development, but they can also give you a lot as a business owner or entrepreneur, and the one thing that your employees need to be skilled in is communication. While you may not consider them the best resource for defending against cyber-attacks, your employees are the first line of defense in this respect. The fact of the matter is that your employees (and yourself) need to be aware of the impact of cyber-attacks on every aspect of the business. Many small businesses are completely unaware, so it’s time to rectify this, and how do you do this?

Teaching Your Employees

The one thing that every employee should be aware of his every aspect of how hackers can infiltrate your business systems. From phishing scams all the way through to malware, if your employees are schooled up in these techniques, and how they manifest themselves, your employees will be expressing due diligence in this respect. This can be done in various ways, from e-learning to regular catch up sessions, but also you need to teach your employees the best practices in looking after data and preventing its loss. Even something as simple as a clean desk policy can have a positive impact on how your staff manages sensitive information.

Making Sure They Understand The Resources

It’s vital that you create a workplace culture that is aware of effective security protocols. For additional piece of mind, it can be beneficial to outsource to a company that has a data loss protection (DLP) scheme, which can severely impact your business in two different ways, more of which shortly. But if you can have the appropriate DLP solutions for your company, this is an efficient layer of protection, and by implementing these into the security protocols, and educating your employees about how to respond to a cyber-attack, this will be the best first line of defense.

Making Your Employees Understand The Impact

It’s one thing to school your employees in the various types of malware and viruses that are going around, but if they don’t understand the impact on the company and them as individuals, they won’t be as invested in being more resilient. This is especially pertinent for small businesses, a lot of small businesses feel that they are not worth a hacker’s time, but these small businesses are more likely to be targets than a larger organization because they don’t have sophisticated virus tools. This will impact your business in two ways. Firstly, the impact on your inability to trade, which means a loss of time, productivity, as well as money. The other impact is that customers won’t trust you, and so they will leave for a competitor.

Your employees will always be the first line of defense in these instances, so it is important for you to make sure they know exactly what to expect, and how to best defend against the problem.