5 Tips to Avoiding a Security Breach

by Kevin Gardner

Security breaches at the workplace can be a nightmare for the entire staff. While it’s not guaranteed that you will never experience a security breach, there are several ways that you can minimize the chances of a breach with some simple steps.

Educate Your Staff

Start by educating all of your work place staff. Human error can be to blame for a lot of accidental breaches in security, but it can be reduced. Explain to your employees the importance of protecting all sensitive information. Employees need to know the importance of not opening suspicious links or downloading music or videos that might give criminals a chance to breach information. All employees should know how to identify phishing emails and websites.

It is a good idea for each employee to have to go through a training class before they begin employment and periodically during their employment to keep them fresh on company policy about protecting information. Have a system in place where an employee can report any suspicious links or behavior that they find.

Have Guidelines for Passwords

Every employee should have their own set of login credentials to keep information safe. Enforcing guidelines on passwords across the workplace will make it harder for any security breaches in the workplace. Require that all passwords have some type of complex formula such as symbols, capital letters or special characters. Also be sure that employees have to change their passwords a certain number of times per year.

Limit Employee Access to Information

Not every employee should have access to everything. Give an employee only the access that they need to properly do their jobs and prevent access from the rest. This prevents to many people from having too much sensitive information.

If employees have any work devices that can be taken out of the office such as laptops or cellphones, they should always be secured with tracking and encryption. Once these items leave the office, the risks are higher that information can be stolen.

Have an Antivirus Program

Every computer in the workplace should have a good antivirus program installed and it should be updated regularly. An antivirus program will help control and regulate any online threats. Additionally, you can also find an advanced managed detection response provider. An MDR provider detects and responds to threats in security of your data. This will give you an extra layer of security from an outside source that may have otherwise been overlooked by an employee or IT department.

Have A PR Team in Place

Even the most reputable companies can have an unexpected data breach. In that case, it’s important that you have a plan already set in place to immediately break the news to customers. It’s a good idea to have a public relations team to come up with a plan in the event that there is a security breach within the business. The PR team can have a strategy for the best way to get the news out to customers or anyone who is affected by the breach. They will also come up with a general statement that can be made in the event that it happens to give to news outlets and the general public.

The most important thing to remember is to announce the breach immediately so that you can prevent any further data from being stolen.

Security breaches are a very serious matter and a hassle for all involved. Follow these simple steps to prevent any security breaches in your business. But in the event that it does happen, you’ll already have a plan in place to tackle the situation.