One Of Your Biggest Security Risks: Your Employees

You might be surprised by how many of your organization’s security issues originate from within. A major contributor is user error, which can lead to some pretty severe problems reaching from your data security, to your workflow, all the way to the continuation of your business itself.

From an employee accidentally clicking the wrong link in an email to accessing business data they have no reason to access, user error can span from accidental to outright malicious. This is made worse if a business neglects to remove a former employee from their system, allowing that employee to continue accessing the business’ network, or selling their access credentials to highest bidder. For these reasons, every business needs to be prepared to deal with user error, or worse.

Keep Access To Who Needs It
It doesn’t make sense to allow open access to your network, as not every member of your staff needs to have access to everything. Employees shouldn’t be able to access your team’s payroll information, as it could cause some issue between coworkers. This is just one example of what your workforce should not have access to, as there is plenty of other sensitive, personal information that a business stores.

The best means of keeping eyes off of the information that they aren’t supposed to see is to keep your infrastructure partitioned, so that employees can only access the information they need for their tasks. Your IT provider can help you do this, so be sure to ask about access control solutions.

Restrict Permissions for Those Who Don’t Need Them
If your users were on their personal computers that weren’t a part of a Bring-Your-Own-Device policy, it wouldn’t matter to you what they were downloading. However, business workstations need to follow a much different set of rules. Who knows what kind of apps they would try to download, and what effect they would have on your systems? These programs could easily be disguised malware or remote access programs that give hackers an easy way in.

To counter this, you have to place limits on what your employees can do with their workstations. Administrative access should be reserved to your network administrator and any IT technicians who are a part of your organization. They are the ones who need these permissions, after all, to make changes to your network in the form of new devices and software.

Remove Employee Credentials
It’s inevitable that people will come and go from your company. If you don’t update or remove permissions, you could set yourself up for major problems that come when people who shouldn’t have access to certain interfaces, do. Can you risk that a former employee that you’ve fired won’t pettily attempt some form of sabotage? It’s much easier to remove this person’s access from every network-attached system you have; before he or she leaves if possible.

Can your business deal with negligence and animosity to prosper? Of course, but why risk it? Washington Works can help you keep the negative results of user error to minimum. To learn more, call us today at 301-571-5040.