When it comes to IT support for small businesses, internal security is just as important as external security. You may not have employees who are intentionally malicious in your organization, but mistakes can happen and can lead to issues just as big as what a cyber criminal could create. Limiting access to sensitive business information to only the people who need to look at it frequently is a good place to start. The main goal is to ensure your data and information doesn’t get into the hands of the wrong person. Here are three internal threats to look out for this year.
Theft of Company Data
A good proactive IT management strategy is to limit user access to only the files each employee needs to look at to do their job effectively. If all employees have the same permissions and can access sensitive company data, you never know when it could be leaked, whether maliciously or unintentionally. Sometimes all it takes is a disgruntled employee to leave the company and take some of your data with them. Restricting access is well worth the effort when you think about it in this capacity.
Unsecure Devices
When you allow employees to use their own devices for business purposes, you are creating different levels of risk. Many people don’t secure their personal devices as much as they should, so business information could be compromised if their personal device gets attacked. An IT consulting service can help educate employees on safe and secure practices with their technology, which can include never using public WiFi, password protecting their devices, safeguarding their equipment and much more.
Malicious Downloads
Whether you want to believe it or not, you can almost guarantee some of your employees browse the internet for personal reasons while on work computers. It’s easy to pull up some YouTube videos, find an online game or get on a social networking site. Employees tend to download files quickly when they are at work to prevent someone from seeing what they are doing. The result could be letting their guard down from a cybersecurity standpoint and potentially downloading malicious files inadvertently. A proactive IT management strategy many employers implement to combat this is to restrict access to websites other than what’s required to do the job.
At Single Point of Contact, we understand why IT support for small business owners is often limited to protecting networks from outside attacks. However, when you work with us, we will protect your company inside your firewall as well as outside of it. Internal cyber attacks can happen just as quickly as an external one, so contact us today to see how we can help protect you from both.
