How to Get Your Staff to Take Cybersecurity Safety Seriously and Avoid Data Breach

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Negligent employees can cause businesses a lot of money. Your staff is a gateway for security threats to infiltrate your network. Cybercriminals know that your employees are easy targets because many companies do not invest in cybersecurity training.

When it comes to protecting your business from a data breach, there are many components that you need to identify. You need to make sure you are doing every preventive measure to improve your mitigation efforts. Data breach causes financial losses, reputational damage, and operation downtime.

UC San Diego Health just recently disclosed a data breach after some of the staff’s emails were compromised. It was through a phishing attack that allowed the criminals to infiltrate the system and allowed access to private information such as names, birth dates, addresses, medical diagnosis, Social Security number, financial information, etc. of patients, employees, and students. The breach occurred between December 2, 2020, and April 8, 2021.

Most employees are focused on their jobs and the task at hand. Cybersecurity just comes as an afterthought or not in their thoughts at all. It is very important to make them aware of the importance of being vigilant. All it takes for a breach to happen is for a negligent or untrained staff to open a single phishing email, download an attachment that contains ransomware, and then your data is compromised.

Here are some steps you can take on how to get your staff to take cybersecurity safety seriously and avoid data breaches:

Make your staff aware of the impact of a data breach: Take some time to educate your staff on how the devastating effects of a data breach can affect your business. Provide examples based on the latest news on cybersecurity.

Follow the latest cybersecurity threats: Keep up on the most up-to-date security threats so you can take preventative steps and relay the information to all your staff. Ways of getting that information are from reputable cybersecurity magazines or blogsite channel subscriptions.

Schedule Periodic Security Training: Partner with a Managed Service Provider or a cybersecurity company to conduct periodic staff training. The training could be for new hires, or it could be refresher courses for your current staff. Cyber threats are continuously evolving and the best people to educate your employees about it are the experts in their field.

Conduct simulated phishing tests to identify those who are vulnerable: You can identify those employees that could potentially fall for email phishing traps by implementing simulated phishing tests. These tests look very similar to real phishing campaigns and will train your staff on what to look out for. Once you identified those that are susceptible to phishing attacks, you can conduct additional training.

Contact Us and learn more on how we may be able to help train your staff on cybersecurity and give them pointers on what to look out for. 

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