Why People Are The Most Important Factor In Your Cybersecurity
It is estimated that cybercrime will cost businesses worldwide $10.5 trillion by the end of 2025. Cybersecurity is a huge priority for businesses of all sizes and in all sectors. A cybersecurity breach can be devastating to businesses, both by causing reputational damage and costing them money. Many businesses will cease trading after a major cybersecurity incident as they do not have the funds to survive it financially.
There are two pillars of good cybersecurity, technology and people. Building and maintaining a secure, resilient IT infrastructure that is suitable for your needs is vital. There are many ways to do this, even if you’re a small business. Many IT managed service providers can help you with your security. Companies such as Netlinkz, which is an IT software company, are at the forefront of security.
Even with all of your IT security measures in place, the biggest security risk to your company is its employees. Not because they have any nefarious schemes in mind, but because not following simple cybersecurity measures can cause the entire system to fail.
The most common issues include:
Not using strong passwords
Most people have over twenty different passwords to remember, others have many times this. In order to reduce the chances of being hacked, you should have a unique password for each. That way, if one is compromised in a data breach, then it cannot be used to access other accounts which use the same passwords.
Using unsecured wifi connections
Much of the communication with office systems don’t take place within the office over the company wifi. People work from home, or when commuting and will take advantage of free wifi wherever they can. These unsecured connections are the perfect place for cyber attackers to collect sensitive data.
They are targeted by social engineering scams
Scammers are getting more sophisticated every day. It used to be that they were very easy to spot, but that’s not necessarily the case. Employees can be targeted with very credible spear-phishing attacks designed to get them to click a link to download malware or give their login credentials.
According to a survey by Tessian, 88% of companies worldwide had been targeted by this kind of attack in the last year.
They don’t come forward with information
Many data breaches or phishing attempts go unreported because employees are afraid that they will face serious repercussions if they are found to be at fault. The key to mitigating the damage from any breach is to identify it, lock it down and put in place any remedial measures as fast as possible. For this, you will need employee buy-in. Building a support system rather than a one that seeks to assign blame can help you overcome this particular problem.
Conclusion
Cybercrime rises year on year, causing many financial and legal troubles for business. Don’t assume that because you are a small business, you will be left alone. Small businesses are targeted more often because they are less likely to have strong security in place.
