As businesses make the shift to online operations, their vulnerability to viruses, malware, and ransomware significantly increases. It is now common knowledge that businesses that have sensitive information make them a target for cybercriminals. It is safe to say that cyber threats are a matter of grave concern for many businesses and that effective cybersecurity must be a key mandate for many organizations.
When businesses think of cyber threats, they usually think of attacks from external parties. The most significant weakness, however, is the organization’s employees. Researchers from Stanford University have found that a whopping eighty-eight percent of breaches occur due to human error and negligence. Hackers are scaling back their attacks on infrastructure and now targeting employees with sophisticated phishing emails and other techniques that look like normal business communication. In today’s article, we will talk about some of the biggest risks to cybersecurity in the workplace.
The Biggest Risks to Cybersecurity in the Workplace
Your business lacks a cybersecurity policy.
Small and large businesses must take security standards seriously if they want to thrive. Cybercriminals do not discriminate and are targeting all kinds of businesses out there. Attacks are becoming more and more frequent and the cost of them continues to rise. Not having a strong cybersecurity policy in place is just not a risk a business should take anymore. You can read more on how to write a cybersecurity policy in a previous article of ours but here are some quick tips on what it should include.
• The risks within your company that are related to cybersecurity
• The risks associated with vendors and other third parties
• The detection of unauthorized activity
• Establishing cybersecurity governance
• The development of procedures and the oversight process
You have not provided your employees with cybersecurity awareness training.
Employee cybersecurity awareness training is critical to the safety of your business. 50% of companies now believe that training for new and established employees should be a significant priority. When deciding on what type of cybersecurity awareness training your employees should get, you should look at the most common types of attacks your industry has experienced.
The most common threat to businesses is phishing attacks which can fool employees into giving the hacker sensitive information or installing malware. You can read more about phishing awareness training here.
There is no security policy in place for remote or hybrid workers.
With the increase in hybrid and remote work from COVID 19, more security risks have arisen from these environments. Employees that are working remotely, whether part time or full time, still need to access sensitive company data and access the internal network.
To make sure hybrid and remote employees don’t pose a security risk, employees should be aware of your remote and hybrid work policies. You can read more about creating a hybrid work policy here. Before allowing employees to work remotely, they should go through mandatory cybersecurity awareness training so they are aware of the risks.
You have not implemented multiple layers of cybersecurity.
There is a popular saying that says “prevention is better than curing”. This saying applies to cybersecurity too. Having multiple layers in both your office and hybrid environments will make it harder for potential attackers to break through your defenses. This is because when implementing a layered approach to cybersecurity, the multiple layers make many points of failure for the hacker. Tekscape has a layered approach to cybersecurity. Here are the different layers and what they mean.
• Data: Regular backups, timely restoration of data, and having appropriate controls in place to protect data.
• Application: Controlling how certain users can interact with applications.
• Endpoint: Protection for all of your company’s devices that are connected to your company network.
• Human: Reducing privileged access to the minimum and authenticating user identities and encouraging cybersecurity awareness training.
• Network: Securing the company’s network via a firewall which can be hardware or software depending on the infrastructure.
• Infrastructure: Reporting and scanning for vulnerabilities.
• External Edge: Regular penetration testing
You have no cybersecurity specialists on staff.
Even if you have an internal IT team, the staff may not be trained to handle the emergencies that come with data breaches and cyber-attacks. Having a full-time cybersecurity specialist on staff will ensure that data remains safe from external and internal threats. They can also educate staff on the importance of maintaining good cyber hygiene. Unfortunately, for many companies, the goal of hiring a cybersecurity specialist is often too expensive or the applicants are underqualified.
An easy way to get around this issue is to work with a managed service provider like Tekscape. We offer 24/7 threat monitoring, penetration testing, patch management, cybersecurity awareness training, and disaster recovery as a service. All of our security specialists are expertly trained and will assist in creating a security plan that is best for your infrastructure.
We hope you enjoyed our article on the biggest risks to cybersecurity in the workplace. Tekscape is a nationally based IT managed service provider. We are based out of New York City but service clients all over the United States. Besides offering managed cybersecurity, we also offer managed IT, networks, collaboration, public and private cloud, and disaster recovery. Contact us to start your managed IT journey today.
