15 Tips & Tricks for More Cybersecurity in Companies | Antivirus Software

Security awareness and Knowledge of employees is crucial for cybersecurity throughout the company - The most important tricks.

 

According to the World Economic Forum, cyber-attacks are among the greatest threats to global stability. In Germany, they even rank first of the greatest risks, followed by data protection violations - and even ahead of interstate conflicts.

For companies, data breaches and cyber-attacks mean high costs averaging $ 3.92 million, as IBM and the Ponemon Institute have determined in their data breach report this year. Therefore, an IT security strategy for every company is crucial for economic success.

This is where employees play a key role - their security awareness and knowledge are crucial for cybersecurity across the company. The IT security provider Varonis recently put together 15 tips & tricks to train employees and raise their awareness.

 

1. Create a Cybersecurity-Friendly Corporate Culture: Companies should appoint responsible persons and motivate employees to fill the security code of conduct with life.
2. Lead by Example: Entrepreneurs are responsible for defining the corporate culture. Owners who take cybersecurity seriously will influence their employees to do the same. In many companies, however, it is precisely the top management that softens or ignores security rules - with serious effects on IT security.
3. Reward Employees Who Report Malicious Emails or Other Attacks: This will increase the motivation of all employees to keep cybersecurity in mind in their daily work.
4. Clear and Concise Communication:  Business leaders should avoid long emails and memos, as most employees will only skim the first few sentences and then delete the message. Instead, it makes sense to create some videos or maybe hang some infographics in the main areas of the company. Even if employees are not very concerned about safety, repetitive reading of actions in visual form will help them remember those messages.
5. Keeping Employees up To Date: Constant dripping wears away the stone - that's why companies should regularly inform their own workforce about new guidelines, threats, viruses, scams and software updates.
6. Open Communication Between Management and IT: In most companies, it is essential to have a board of directors with IT knowledge who can understand and communicate issues of IT security - as an important voice for a topic that the other board members do not understand.
7. Awareness Training Right on The First Working Days of New Employees: It's never too early to learn good habits - so it makes sense to integrate cybersecurity into the onboarding process, as new employees then usually get access to accounts and create their passwords and learn more about the company processes.
8. Talking About data Ethics: When employees think about the ethical side of data - the people, individuals, or families who represent the data - data breaches are less likely and their impact could be reduced.
9. Perform Cybersecurity Emergency Simulations: These can be organized by internal security service or external specialists. The simulations should be tailored to the specific work processes and focus on attacks that employees might actually experience. This significantly improves the learning process and the employees learn very specific measures and opportunities for improvement - tailored to their respective area.
10. Prioritizing Security Risks Correctly: Many organizations do a poor job of properly prioritizing information security risks. In part, this is due to how and in what context information is presented. Information security risk assessments and maturity assessments are tedious, overly complicated, and difficult to pinpoint into a specific roadmap. The solution lies in communication: the central message must relate to the risk to the company and that must also form the core of the reporting.
11. Correct Classification of The Data: If this is not the case, companies cannot precisely control who should have access to the data. Data governance is key, especially when it comes to sensitive data
12. Access Rights to Files and Folders According to The “need-To-Know” Principle: Each employee is only allowed to access the data that he actually needs for his work.
13. Provide Additional Training: Employees, especially those in the focus of potential attacks should be given the opportunity to continue their cybersecurity training and learn new preventive and defensive skills. But in general, the topic of training for IT security should not be underestimated as a whole, as I recently worked out in a “Rant in the morning”.
14. Working with External Experts: Companies must inform openly and publicly about what they are doing for IT security. Cyber ​​gangsters spend the whole day researching the good guys - to be even more successful the next day. Companies have to play by the same rules - external experts can be very helpful here.
15. Staying up To Date on IT Security: Only through constant learning is it possible to be prepared for all the different viruses and new hacking methods that are used against you. IT security executives should keep up with cybersecurity news and updates, and consult experts to stay ahead of the curve. Use the best antivirus software to protect your data from cyber criminals.