Losing access to your personal Facebook or Instagram account due to a hacker is upsetting – you no longer have an archive of fond memories in the form of photos, conversations with friends and family, and posts about what’s happening in your life.
However, these same hacking attempts can have a significantly worse impact on companies with numerous employees. For many reasons, employees and their actions can put a company and its cybersecurity at considerable risk.
The best way to bypass employee vulnerability is to get to the root of the issues and determine which methods your business can use to protect the company’s assets and online presence. Let’s examine the human factor in cybersecurity today!
Employee Vulnerabilities
Employees can inadvertently put a company's cybersecurity at risk in numerous ways:
- Weak passwords: Using unsafe and easily guessable passwords and reusing passwords or usernames across multiple work accounts can increase the risk of unauthorized access to companies’ systems.
- Phishing attacks: Opening phishing emails and clicking on malicious links or attachments can compromise sensitive company information or lead to malware infections on company devices.
- Unsecured devices: Using personal devices for work without proper security measures, such as encryption and antivirus software, and without IT department permissions can expose company data to theft or unauthorized access.
- Sharing credentials: Irressponsibly sharing or leaving an employee’s login information written down in easily accessible locations can lead to unauthorized access to the company’s systems and accounts.
- Unauthorized software: Installing unauthorized software or apps on company laptops or phones can introduce vulnerabilities or malware into the company's tightly-knit network.
- Social engineering: Revealing sensitive information to unauthorized people over the phone or through email due to malicious social engineering tactics can compromise company security.
- Lack of awareness: Ignoring essential security protocols, such as not locking computers when walking away from the desk or failing to report security incidents promptly, can weaken the company's overall cybersecurity posture.
- Ignoring updates: Consistently ignoring software updates and patches can leave the company’s systems vulnerable to known security vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can exploit.
- Insider threats: Deliberate actions by disgruntled or malicious employees, such as stealing sensitive data or sabotaging systems, can pose significant cybersecurity risks to the company.
- Poor training: Inadequate cybersecurity training provided by the company can result in a lack of knowledge about the best security practices, making the employees more susceptible to cyber threats.
Strategies to Reduce Human-Induced Risks
Here are some strategies that companies can use to reduce human-induced risks to the company’s cybersecurity, assets, and online presence:
Partner With a Proxy Service Provider
Proxy servers like GoProxies help mitigate human-induced cybersecurity risks by filtering web traffic, enforcing access control policies, and providing anonymity and privacy through IP masking and data encryption.
Additionally, proxy servers enhance security by caching frequently accessed content locally, reducing exposure to external threats. They also enable logging and monitoring of web traffic for early detection of suspicious activities, and they manage bandwidth efficiently to prioritize critical business applications and minimize security vulnerabilities associated with excessive usage.
Implementing Cybersecurity Training
Implementing cybersecurity training is a proactive human risk management strategy that mitigates employee-induced risks by raising awareness about common cyber threats, such as phishing attacks, malware, and social engineering tactics. Through interactive training sessions and simulations, employees can learn how to identify and respond to potential security threats effectively.
Fostering a culture of security awareness empowers employees to make informed decisions and adhere to best practices, such as using strong passwords, recognizing suspicious emails, and practicing safe browsing habits.
Apply a Multi-Level Approval System
Applying a multi-level approval system within employees can mitigate human-induced risks by adding a supplemental layer of scrutiny to sensitive actions or decisions within the organization. Requiring approvals from multiple authorized individuals, such as managers or in-house IT experts, reduces the likelihood of unauthorized or risky actions being carried out.
This system promotes responsibility and ensures that critical processes, such as financial transactions, downloading software, or accessing sensitive data, undergo thorough review before doing that.
Enact a Culture of Accountability
Enacting a culture of accountability amongst coworkers fosters a sense of responsibility for their actions and decisions, reducing the likelihood of human-induced risks in the workplace. When individuals understand that their actions have serious consequences, they’re more likely to adhere to security protocols and best practices.
This mindset promotes transparency and encourages employees to promptly report potential security threats or breaches. Ultimately, a culture of accountability creates a collective effort toward maintaining a secure environment, mitigating the impact of human errors or malicious activities on the company's cybersecurity.
Avoiding Human Vulnerabilities in Cybersecurity
At the end of the (work) day, maintaining the cybersecurity, assets, and online presence of any company lies in the hands of each individual employee, no matter their position or seniority level.
To mitigate those human-induced risks, each employee should know how their actions can affect the company's online safety. Each company and its IT or legal departments should enforce as many strategies as possible to avoid human vulnerabilities within its network.
A group of people working
Photo by: https://unsplash.com/@sigmund
