3 Ways Employees Accidentally Invite Hackers In

What’s your business’ biggest network security weakness? Contrary to popular belief, it’s not your security solutions like your firewall and antivirus; it’s your employees and their everyday practices that put your business at the most risk. Today, we want to cover the three most common accidental ways your employees might be putting your business at risk (and what you can do about them).

Employees Reuse Personal Passwords for Critical Business Applications

Password fatigue is real, and it’s impacting your business whether you realize it or not.

Imagine the average employee, who has to log into your company’s systems dozens of times throughout the day, all while confirming they are human with MFA. That same employee is going to use their Netflix password for your company’s payroll software if you don’t do anything about it, if only to relieve some of the pressure. This puts your business at risk, especially if their password isn’t secure enough for your policies.

We recommend you deploy a company-wide password manager to help your team store and generate secure, complex passwords, as well as enforce multi-factor authentication whenever and wherever possible on your network.

Staff Members Bypass Secure Networks By Using Shadow IT for Convenience

Sometimes your staff will find your current tools and processes so clunky that they get creative and find their own workarounds.

While you have to applaud their initiative, there’s a right and a wrong way to add new tools to your company’s infrastructure. The right way involves getting the tools approved by your IT department, and the wrong way is using it without their knowledge, an idea known as shadow IT. The more shadow IT is found on your network, the greater your business’ threat surface area, which means hackers are more likely to find your company’s data in easy-to-access, unencrypted places.

This is why it’s so important that you regularly conduct software audits, as well as train your team on your sanctioned software solutions; if you have an adequate stack of tools at your disposal, your team shouldn’t feel pressured into finding alternative solutions.

Your Team Falls for Urgency-Based Phishing Attacks That Mimic Leadership

The days of the “Nigerian Prince” scams are largely over, and hackers have moved on to targeted business email compromise attacks that directly exploit the psychology of your staff.

The typical attack looks like it’s from the CEO or other leadership entity with some kind of urgent subject line. Sometimes they’ll ask the user to click a link and make an immediate payment to keep certain services on, or they might ask you to download an infected attachment. In any case, the end result is the same: the employee does the thing requested of them out of a desire to be a good employee, even if it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.

We recommend that employees always perform the double-check rule, where they contact the supposed sender of the email just to confirm the action beforehand. This is especially important for financial or sensitive data transfer.

Look, your employees aren’t actively trying to sabotage your business; they are just trying to do their jobs, and any actions that subvert security should be viewed as a plea for help. Your job is to make network security convenient so they don’t have to go to these lengths to be productive and safe. This is where L7 Solutions can help. Our trusted IT professionals can help by conducting a security audit and assist you in getting the tools and strategies that will work to protect your business’ assets. Give us a call today at (954) 573-1300 to learn more.