Welcome back fellow entrepreneurs - today I want to talk about Employees.
They are great – they make our businesses flourish. But unfortunately, sometimes they do make mistakes.
And the mistakes can be very costly, especially when we are talking about cyber or data breaches.
While some employees act maliciously, many really don’t, and just do things they shouldn’t do by mistake or accident.
Employee mistakes actually account for an increasing number of data breaches – again, often times not due to bad intentions.
For example, lets talk about “phishing emails”. These are emails from nefarious individuals that look legitimate.
However, they are not legitimate and they are trying to entice the recipient to open the email so that a virus or spyware can be installed on the computer.
Once this happens – boom! This is where things can go very bad. The hacker can now work inside your company’s network.
Occasionally, a hacker will even pose as an internal employee, instructing colleagues to transfer money to a certain account.
These can look very legitimate but clearly are not.
This is why its important to educate employees – constantly – on being very careful what emails and links they go to and what sites they browse on.
This includes being aware of both business and personal work being done at your office.
It is extremely important to establish some guidelines for your employees on how they use internet at work.
Remember, this to ensure protection of your business, customer and employee data. Being thoughtful and aware is in the best interests of everyone.
Again, while there are surely malicious individuals out there, many employees are not and do not think they are doing anything potentially dangerous.
Its up to business owners to actively manage this risk – it can prevent huge headaches in the future.
So to recap – educate yourself, educate employees on what is permissible to access at the workplace.
As Ben Franklin said, An ounce of prevention if worth a pound of cure.