Your Employees Can Be One Of Your Biggest Security Risks

A surprising number of security issues come from inside your organization. User error on the part of the employee can present major problems for your workflow, data security, and the integrity of your business. User error could be something as simple as an employee clicking on the wrong links when they receive a suspicious email in their inbox, or if they are accessing data that they simply have no business accessing in the first place. Sometimes businesses will even completely forget to remove employee credentials when they leave a project or the company creating a breachable hole in your network. Regardless of the reason, user error can be a detrimental occurrence, and one which must be prepared for.

Restrict User Permissions
You may notice that every time you try to download an application to your computer, it requests specific permissions from the user. If it were your personal computer, you could just click OK without thinking twice. However, this isn’t your personal computer--it’s your office workstation. If you let your employees download whatever apps they want to their devices, who knows what kind of nonsense you’ll find on them? They could accidentally download malware or install something to give hackers remote access.

This is why you limit what your users can do on their workstations. The only users who should have administrative access to your company’s devices are your network administrator and any IT technicians you employ, as they will be the ones primarily installing new software on your devices.

Minimize Data Access
If you give your entire staff access to every little part of your data infrastructure, they are bound to run into data that’s not meant for their eyes. For example, an employee might gain access to your business’ payroll, which could cause unnecessary friction. They also might find other sensitive information that they aren’t supposed to see, like personal information or financial details.

The best way to keep this from happening is to partition off your infrastructure so that employees can only access information that they need to do their jobs. Just ask your IT provider about your access control options.

Remove Employee Credentials
What happens when an employee leaves your organization, but is still able to access their email, your network, and their workstation? You could run into an employee sabotaging your organization. This isn’t something that you want to deal with, and the easiest way to make sure it doesn’t happen is to begin the process of removing this employee from their accounts before they leave.

Passwords need to be changed so that the employee cannot access your infrastructure any longer. You don’t want to delete the accounts entirely, though. You might want to check through the accounts, particularly because you might find reasons why they have chosen to leave your organization.

Can your business keep itself safe from user error and other threats? Directive can help you keep the negative results of user error to minimum. To learn more, reach out to us at 607.433.2200.