3 Employee-Related Threats and What To Do to Stop Them

I think most business owners would be kind of surprised to find out that the biggest threat to their business wasn’t hackers or natural disasters, it was coming from the same people they depend on the most: their employees. 

Employees Can Cause A Lot of Issues

There are three ways that employees can be a threat to your business. Let’s go through them today. 

#1 - User Error

People make mistakes and sometimes when a mistake is made it has really negative consequences. Most of the time if it is a matter of a simple honest mistake, and not downright negligence, the negative consequences can be forgiven, but don't be surprised if there is some fury when your business deals with downtime, malware, and other issues that simple user errors can deliver. 

#2 - User Manipulation

Hackers aren’t dumb. They aren’t going to try and crack unhackable encryption. Instead of trying to do the impossible, attempting to breach a system that the best hackers in the world wouldn’t have time in their lives to break, they use their wits. Phishing and spear phishing, along with other social engineering tactics have worked for these people for years and if your employee falls for their “charms”, you will probably end up with some computer problems. 

#3 - Sabotage

The worst of the three, but also the least likely to strike your business. Some employees don't mess with their employment, but some people see an opportunity to steal or corrupt data and they take it. That’s why it is important to close down access to your network after someone leaves your company.

Actively Protect Your Business 

We’ve mentioned a couple of ways to keep your business secure already, but to create the security-first strategy that you need to have nowadays, you need to find ways to block out threats. You will want to implement, and consistently update, an access control system with role-based permission to keep your data from being accessed by just anyone. 

You should consistently remind your staff just how important their role in the overall security of your company is. This alone can have a substantial impact on your ability to keep your systems secure and keep you avoiding downtime. You will also need to ensure that all the security software—firewalls, antivirus, and the like—is consistently updated to ensure that you have the latest threat definitions. You should always keep your data backed up both onsite and in the cloud so that you can restore data should anything happen to you.

Lastly, it wouldn’t hurt to monitor your employees and ensure that they are well-trained so that, if something were to come their way, they could identify it and eliminate the threat. 

If you would like to learn more about cybersecurity tools and best practices, reach out to our IT security experts today at (703) 821-8200.