Business security is very important this is why it is vital to protect all the information you have stored on your computer. You should definitely ask your employees to be extra careful when they are saving their passwords, downloading or installing software or when they are opening e-mail attachments. Reports done by IT Support London services such as Netstar show that human errors are the main causes of almost half of the security breaches. It can either be lack of knowledge or failure in following the security procedures. So here is how to persuade your employees to take security more seriously.
[Read also: 10 Ways to Protect Personal Information Online]
Employees to take security seriously? How?
Discussions
At monthly or weekly meetings you should make sure that you discuss security problems also. Send memos and post your security policy somewhere everyone can see it and “learn it by heart”. For example, you could ask everyone at the end of your meetings when was the last time they updated their operating system in order to prevent attacks. This simple question shows that security is something that you take seriously. Remind your employees that they should change their passwords every six months and make sure that they remember them and not save them somewhere.
[Read also: Too many Passwords – How to remember them all?]
Acceptable Use Policy
Another important aspect that you should cover is the acceptable use policy. You should make sure that you put down in writing everything that is acceptable and what it not acceptable to do with a company’s computer. This policy can cover a wide range of things such as passwords, opening e-mail attachments from unknown senders and downloading software. Each employee should sign it, therefore acknowledging that they have read and have accepted the terms of this policy.
Your employees should also be given information related to the sensitive information they stumble upon. Make it clear what e-mails employees can forward to each other or to others outside the company, how to use copyrighted material and how to share customer private information. Saving, deleting and editing information should be clarified in a simple handout attached to the acceptable use policy. You could ask them to sign it after they have read it just to make sure that everyone understands the importance of such rules.
Get Professional Help
Hiring an IT support firm to help you with all the security and maintenance problems is great for your company, otherwise you will be overwhelmed. It is by far a lot easier to have professionals taking care of this aspect for you. They will offer IT support over the phone or e-mail and they will also come to your location for program updates, disk clean-ups and other maintenance issues that might occur. Such professionals will be able to install the perfect antivirus for your computers, they will maintain your networks security and your servers also. It is a lot easier to have specialists resolve these issues rather than ask your employees to update their programs. Another great option is to install access control systems, which requires your staff to use access control smart cards to enter a building or office area, hence automatically strengthens the security as it minimizes the risk of unauthorized personnel gaining access.
When you run a business, it’s important to make sure that you take all the precautions necessary in order to protect the sensitive data you have stored on your computers.
What are the best practices for security at the office? Let us know in the comments.
offices always need security because there can be confidential data which can be stolen via USB drives.
Yea, data can be stolen very easily.
If you work in an office, there are many strangers that come and go and you do not know if they have good or bad intentions. This is tjhe reason why it is important that the office is always secured. This should be seen and read by the people who are working in the office because safety is always on top.
There has never really been a time where so much data can be stolen so quickly and easily if someone wanted to do wrong by your organisation, the threat is real as people often sit with ipods at their desks and they can hold massive amounts of data.
People need to be made aware of what to look out for, great post!
Last year in the Netherlands a government office of Amsterdam left the login name and password to a classified area on their site. The part where the login name and password were were accesible for public. A famous news website got hold of it and copied everything in the classified part of the database. That way they found out about a project that the government was financing for a building that was a total waste of money. And by bringing this out publicly the government decided to sell the building, saving the tax payers millions.
Now that is a stupid human error. It’s like leaving the key in the lock on the outside of the door and then being surprised that your house got robbed.
Wow! Appreciate the news Danny. Thanks for sharing.
These are some great tips for secure computer usage. There is so much valuable data stored on computers and so many scams out there now to get at it that it is very important and difficult to keep educated on the best security practices for online. Additionally, though, offices should also make sure that they are being equally safe with their paper documents. It is a good idea to make sure you are discarding of any sensitive documents in a secure manner. Paper shredding is probably the most secure and efficient way to dispose of documents.