Christo IT Services Blog

Are Employees Putting Your Business At Risk Of Cyber-Attack

Written by Chris Schalleur | Apr 28, 2021 6:25:22 PM

You might think that this is untrue, you and your firm strive to hire the best people it can find – people who are good at their jobs and would never dream of putting their own employer at risk.   However.....

Here are four ways your employees might be endangering your business and themselves — and what you can do about it.

Web Browsing

One of the most basic rules of surfing the web is to not click on anything that looks suspicious. 

Avoid websites that do not have “https” in front of their web address. If all you see is “http” then you should not trust that website.

Strong Passwords

This is one of the worst IT security habits out there. It’s too easy for employees to use simple passwords or to reuse the same password over and over again or to use one password for everything. Or, worse yet, all of the above.

If you use the same password over and over, a data breach can then be used to attack other providers with the passwords that have been hacked.

To avoid this, Use strong passwords, change passwords often, and not reuse old passwords. Use two-factor authentication whenever possible and ALWAYS with financial websites and apps.

Secure Connections

You should only use a public connection for your basic web browsing, and never for financial/sensitive information.  

A great rule of thumb is if you would be uncomfortable saying out loud to people nearby what you are typing/working on, you are best served using an encrypted VPN connection, or waiting till you have a private connection.

Education

Make sure the team knows about the current threats out there - a Managed Services Firm for IT (Such as Christo IT) makes a great resource to keep the firm informed about potential problems out "in the wild"