Preventing Cyberattacks At Work: What You Could Be Doing?

Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. With so much business being conducted online, there is an increased likelihood for cyberattacks. As such you have to think about how to defend you operations against them. The following contributed post entitled, Preventing Cyberattacks At Work: What You Could Be Doing?

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It’s not always simple to protect your business from a cyberattack. Not only do you need to consider your IT security and hire the right agencies to make sure that your firewalls remain in place, you need to ensure that you train your staff properly in what to see in a cyberattack. You need to train every single person working in your business to know what to look for – and that gets tougher as technology evolves.

The more we bring in new security measures and technology, the harder it gets to ensure that the business is protected. Why? Well, as technology becomes more sophisticated, cyber hackers and attackers get more sophisticated! You need to know that you can handle training on physical theft, phishing simulations, how to recognize spam for scams – it’s vital. Your employees need to be educated in cyber security and all that comes with it so that they can alert your IT team when things crop up. So, how can you do more for your business and protect it properly?

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● Offer Dedicated Training. Your business emails are a gateway for attackers and business email compromise attacks are some of the most sophisticated around. Hackers can extract information from your business when you don’t have the right phishing simulations and spam training invested in for your staff. Someone would see an email and think it’s legit, only to forward it on and further impact your business. With the right training provider, you can ensure that employees know what these scams look like, and they won’t be tricked into sending these emails.
● Put Policies In Place. Your business may be a flexible, “down with the kids” type business, but that doesn’t mean that you should allow your staff free reign over the internet. Company devices should be connected only for professional reasons, but you can still be flexible with personal devices at work. Teach your staff which files they can download and from which websites. If they know which networks are issued by you and are safe to use, they’ll be able to lower the risk of being scammed. Keep those policies in place and reestablish them as you need to. Don’t let it go, either, as you want to ensure that everyone is on the same wavelength with regard to security policies.
● Add Password Training. Your IT team may hand out passwords to staff, but that doesn’t mean that your staff shouldn’t know how to change them as needed. It should be that you all change your passwords every couple of months and they must remain case-sensitive and hard to break.
● Educate On Reporting Procedures. Lastly, train your staff to know where to report any scam issues they come across. It’s so important that they know to whom they should raise the alarm and how to ensure that the right people know straight away so that precautionary measures can be taken. Mistakes will happen – it’s human – but it’s easier to fix those mistakes if everyone knows what to do.

Author: anwaryusef

Anwar Y. Dunbar is a Regulatory Scientist. Being a naturally curious person, he is also a student of all things. He earned his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Michigan and his Bachelor’s Degree in General Biology from Johnson C. Smith University (JCSU). Prior to starting the Big Words Blog Site, Anwar published and contributed to numerous research articles in competitive scientific journals reporting on his research from graduate school and postdoctoral years. After falling in love with writing, he contributed to the now defunct Examiner.com, and the Edvocate where he regularly wrote about: Education-related stories/topics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Financial Literacy; as well as conducted interviews with notable individuals such as actor and author Hill Harper. Having many influences, one of his most notable heroes is author, intellectual and speaker, Malcolm Gladwell, author of books including Outliers and David and Goliath. Anwar has his hands in many, many activities. In addition to writing, Anwar actively mentors youth, works to spread awareness of STEM careers, serves on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the David M. Brown Arlington Planetarium, serves as Treasurer for the JCSU Washington, DC Alumni Chapter, and is active in the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace Ministry at the Alfred Street Baptist Church. He also tutors in the subjects of biology, chemistry and physics. Along with his multi-talented older brother Amahl Dunbar (designer of the Big Words logos, inventor and a plethora of other things), Anwar is a “Fanboy” and really enjoys Science-Fiction and Superhero movies including but not restricted to Captain America Civil War, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Prometheus. He is a proud native of Buffalo, NY.

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