Cybercrime is increasing dramatically. In fact, ”The 2012 Security Threat Report” by data security company SOPHOS, indicates that we “need to be ready for attacks on new platforms and devices—all the places we use data for work and our personal lives,” and that “cybercriminals are becoming more professionalized through the availability of commercial crimeware kits… the result is mass generation of new malicious code and exploits, and a significant increase in the volume of malware.”
Securing company data is now a top priority. But if you are relying solely on your tech team to protect your data, you are not as secure as you think you are. Instead, everyone in your organization needs to get involved in keeping information safe and private.
Where do you begin?
Start With E-Mail.
One of the most vulnerable areas in your organization is e-mail. People often communicate private information within e-mails, but this data is usually not secured. To overcome this issue, implement systems on or off-site that help you contain communications-channels to your organization. These include:
- Employing technologies that scan and monitor e-mail communications for potential, intellectual-property breaches;
- Maintaining outside file repositories with logging capabilities for file exchanges; and
- Using encryption, firewalls, spam filtering, and other systems for protection against viruses, spam and phishing attempts.
This way, you have control over internal communications online and a way to keep offending visitors out. However, none of this will work if you don’t talk to your entire organization about the importance of securing data.
Educate Employees.
While your tech team may be monitoring the security of your organization regularly, other employees are not. Many of them do not know the security risks involved with e-mail attachments, visiting certain Websites, communicating private information online, and more.
Because of this, your tech leaders need to communicate with all employees every month. It’s their job to educate staff members on technology “do’s and don’ts” within the organization and what can happen if they break the rules.
This educational process may involve weekly meetings, monthly newsletters, training sessions, e-mail notices, or even fun events to build relationships between departments. And since technology is constantly changing, you need to look at these organization-wide communications as ongoing.
All employees need to know how to avoid security issues, what to do if they see a potential, security threat and what is going on with security in the organization as a whole.
Security is a Team Effort.
While your tech team may be on the cutting-edge of security, this is just the beginning. Everyone in your organization needs to know the security policies, be aware of threats and act accordingly. By communicating regularly and working together, you can avoid unwanted infiltrations into your system, information leaks and major, security issues.
What are you going to do today to let your employees know about tech security at your company? Please comment below, or write to me at The Rich Dad Company, [email protected].
