Don't Let Employees Inadvertently Leave Your Business Exposed

Insider dangers contribute to a remarkable number of data breaches. These cases of data vulnerability are permitted by a member of your workforce, whether they intended to harm your business or simply made an honest mistake. With so much focus directed toward the dangerss out in the world, sometimes we forget that the biggest threats can be among our ranks. Here are a few ways to keep insider dangers from doing your business significant harm.

Here are some stats that were drawn from a Forrester Research study:

• Insider threats cause 40% of data breaches.
• 26% of these data breaches are malicious.
• Accidents and general use cause 56% of these breaches.

Obviously, simple mistakes contribute the most to data breaches. To prepare for this, let’s examine some of the most common errors made by end users.

Losing Devices while Traveling
Most employees have a commute as they go to and from the office, and business often requires a worker to travel on behalf of the organization. This produces an opportunity, should the employee have a work device with them, for that device to be lost: left at airport security or in the backseat of an Uber, or stolen. Remind your employees how easily such devices can vanish and that they need to be mindful of such company property while they are traveling.

Utilizing Unfamiliar Flash Drives
Flash drives are everywhere in the modern era, which isn’t necessarily a good thing for your company. While many are harmless, the little storage devices can easily be converted into a vehicle for malware. If this is the case, once the USB drive is plugged in, the workstation and quite possibly your entire network could be infected. While this doesn’t mean that flash drives should be forbidden from your office, you should mandate that IT takes a look at them all before they are used.

Allowing Devices Connect Willy-Nilly
Odds are almost everybody in your office has a smartphone, along with a laptop and various other devices that all utilize an Internet connection... which means that potential points of access to your network have increased significantly. To counter this, you need to put a Bring Your Own Device (or BYOD) policy in place that protects both your employees and your company. Using a comprehensive mobile device management platform, a BYOD policy will dictate what control you have over user access and data transmission using employee and customer mobile devices.

Being Negligent With Company Information
Back in World War II, there was a propaganda campaign by the United States Office of War Information warning citizens against the possibility of supplying enemy spies with information: “Loose lips sink ships.” The same can be said of most business operations. Seemingly harmless choices, like using a personal email account for business purposes, could potentially lead to a data leak. Personal email simply doesn’t have the same protections as business-class email does; that’s just one example of how your data could be left exposed via employee negligence.

If your business has difficulties with your end users making mistakes, reach out to us for help. Call Macro Systems at 703-359-9211 for more information.