5 Best Cyber Security Practices To Follow At Workplace

Cyber Crimes have been on the rise for the past few years. Cyber attackers are constantly looking for vulnerabilities to target organizations. In a world where almost everything is maintained,managed and accessed online and online reputation has become everything. Cyber crimes have been increasing at a rapid pace. Besides large companies and government organizations, small and medium businesses have also become favorite targets for hackers. According to Cyber Security Ventures the cyber crimes will cost the world over $6 trillion by 2021. As most of the vulnerabilities happen at the workplace, the organizations with more advanced threat detection systems also cannot protect themselves from cyber attacks. Educating employees to handle information security and systems effectively is one of the most important measures to be practiced at the workplace.Follow these 5 best cyber security tips in your organization to protect from vulnerabilities.

Follow recommended Password Security Practices

Hackers can exploit a simple mistake of an employee to break in and embezzle the sensitive data of the organisation. It’s not just the organizational data will be at stake, but also the data of their clients and partners will not be safe. Make a practice of using different passwords for different accounts and avoid using simple, weak and repeated passwords.

Always use a combination of lower and upper case letters, special characters and symbols. It is recommended to use over 8 characters in passwords as a best practice. However, it is always better to use long passwords to make the cyber attackers difficult to crack the password. Avoid using personal information like phone numbers, date of birth, child's name, spouse name which you post regularly on social media, as they are easily prone to be cracked.

Using Passwords Managers while generating passwords has become a common practice among organizations and professionals. Password Manager creates unique and complex passwords for your different accounts. With Password Managers you just have to remember one password to login to multiple accounts as it stores multiple passwords. Setting expiry dates to passwords is a good security practice from getting compromised by unused accounts or unauthorized users.

According to the 2019 Data Risk Report, about 61% organizations made use of more than 500 user accounts whose passwords never expired. Although it is difficult to keep changing your password, it is very essential to change your password frequently.

Beware of Email Scams or Email Phishing

Beware of the email scammers and never open the links received from unauthorized or unknown sources before checking the authenticity of the sender. The sender may disguise himself as a representative of an authentic source. Make sure you never download any files from unauthorized senders unless you cross verify it, or you know the sender or you requested it personally.

Apply Two-Factor Authentication

Applying Two Factor Authentication is a good and incredibly secure practice to access devices and other organizational resources. Two-factor authentication is fast becoming a standard among organizations for providing access to resources. It requires the users to enter an OTP sent to their mobile phones in addition to entering their login credentials. Hence, Two-factor authentication keeps the data and accounts safe from hackers by making it difficult for them to gain access.

Keep Updating your Applications and Software

The devices and software we use offer updates frequently.Most of the software comes with zero vulnerabilities and frequent patches or updates are released to make them more secure. As it is a relentless exercise to keep updating and installing patches on all of the devices we use, most of the users consider it unnecessary or downgrade it to low priority, particularly in organizations where patch management is not enforced from the central IT Team. But one should bear in mind that software and application updates are often rolled out to eliminate harmful vulnerabilities from your systems and it is utmost important to keep your systems updated.

Conduct regular Cyber Security Training Program

Employees are the company’s biggest assets. However, they can become their biggest security vulnerability. A single click or unintentional response to malicious emails by an employee can compromise an organization's security and cost millions. Many organizations are making mandatory and regular practice to conduct cyber security training programs for their employees to protect data from vulnerability.

The training plan must be regularly updated to keep pace with the fast-changing technology landscape. There are cyber security services firms having years of experience in designing/delivering awareness programs and cyber security boot camps for organizations.

Cyber security emergency simulation exercises are also fast becoming a part of the cyber security training plans. Such simulated exercises should be customized to specific job functions and focus on possible attacks that could enlighten employees on specific takeaways and areas of improvement.