Cybersecurity Best Practices for Employees

You have locks on your doors. You install sprinklers, fire alarms, and maps indicating the best way to exit the building in an emergency. If you work with valuables or around the unpredictable public, you may have safes or panic buttons in place. These are all solid protections to keep your people and property secure against tangible threats, but not all problems are so concrete in a modern world that relies heavily on technology. With so many other things to attend to, and limited time and resources, it’s easy to grow lax in maintaining cybersecurity best practices for employees. And unfortunately, cracks in your cybersecurity can leave your business incredibly vulnerable.

Reviewing Cybersecurity Best Practices for Employees

Can your business function without emails? What about computers or cell phones? How much of the vital information that you need to get through a successful day is stored on your tech? How vulnerable is it to a virus or other attack? In today’s world, cybersecurity best practices for employees are a crucial part of your company’s protective shield. Is your team ready?

Having professional IT services ready to assist you with problems is essential. However, I think we can all agree that it’s better to stop an attack before it starts. Reviewing cybersecurity best practices with your team regularly can fortify your defenses.

Prioritize Strong Passwords

What’s in a name? While philosophers continue to debate this question, it doesn’t require a cybersecurity expert to know that a name or other easily guessed word shouldn’t be your password. As Nationwide advises, choosing strong passwords is one of the easiest things anyone can do to safeguard their activities online. In addition, those passwords should be changed regularly. If you aren’t certain that your employees will make a habit of creating and updating their passwords, consider assigning passwords for work devices and programs. You could also invest in a password management system.

Use Multifactor Authentication

A layered defense creates additional barriers and makes it more challenging for a thief to break in. That’s the purpose of multifactor authentication. With multifactor authentication, users must combine two or more independent credentials to form a single key before they can gain access. This might be offering a password they know and a fingerprint. It could involve inserting a security card and typing a pin number. Or, it might require a known password and a one-time password that’s delivered via text or email.

Recognize Phishing

Human error is often the chink in the armor of a company’s cybersecurity. Recognizing phishing scams, which are emails designed to deceive, can help protect the integrity of your computer systems and prevent theft and other mischief. Phishing emails often contain several red flags:

Weird greetings
Odd spelling or grammar mistakes
Shifty images or odd domains that aren’t quite right
Implied urgency
Unusual attachments instead of the familiar .doc, .pdf, or .xls
Suspicious links

Limit Software Downloads

Even a trusted, brand-name software program isn’t always a safe option. If you download it from the wrong place, you may also be downloading a worm, spyware, trojan, virus, or some other form of malware. To avoid the dangers lurking, establish protocols for downloading software to business devices. Limit what software is downloaded, and ensure that is always thoroughly vetted.

Beware of Public Wi-Fi

Public Wi-Fi may seem convenient, but like water holes in the wild, it’s a popular hunting ground. Hackers and other bad actors lurk because information shared over public Wi-Fi is more visible and the shared network makes it easier for malware to be spread to unwary users. What can you do when you’re traveling and need to use the internet? Norton suggests using a virtual private network, or VPN. This service encrypts a public Wi-Fi to create a private connection.

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Keeping your company’s tech secure works best when everyone works together, so ensuring that your team follows cybersecurity best practices for employees just makes sense. However, cybersecurity is continually evolving, and there are times when the best thing that you can do is contact an IT professional to find the right solution. With a menu of comprehensive services for businesses, CPI Technologies is ready to deliver the answers that you need for your IT issues. To discover how we can help your company thrive, contact CPI Technologies today.

Since 1963, CPI Technologies has been offering IT services and office technologies custom-designed to meet the specific needs of our customers. Our services include Managed IT, Managed Print Services (MPS), Electronic Document Management (EDM), data backup, network security, VoIP phone systems, and more. We also offer top-of-the-line office equipment, including printers, scanners, fax machines, shredders, folders, collators, and all-in-ones. Let us show you how we can increase your office’s efficiency and productivity. To get started, please request a quote or give us a call at 800-337-2679.