It's hard to admit, but your employees aren’t as smart in some areas as you’d like them to be. Don’t worry, that’s what company culture is for, to help bring employees of all kinds up to the right levels. One of the key issues in the modern era of business is cybersecurity. Did you know that the number one cause of business harm due to cybersecurity is a lack of internal awareness? Employees can’t figure out everything themselves, they do need to be taught how to react and behave for certain things. Cybersecurity is already a niche subject, employees won’t be very familiar with the best practices. Unless you implement them.

Punishing abandoned machines

Employees get up to talk with other employees, walk over to another person’s computer screen and take a look at something they don’t understand. They may be over there for a few minutes, maybe a few seconds. In just a short amount of time, their machine could be overridden by a virus, or have data stolen from it. What would cause this? Another employee is most likely the case. Corporate espionage happens at ground level and this is why you need to have a policy where, whenever an employee leaves their machine, they must log out. If someone does not do this, you need to give them some kind of punishment.

• The first time, it's a verbal warning and explanation for why you have this policy in place.
• The second time, they will need to be told to take a 5-minute break from their task and told to wait in another seating area, away from their desk. 
• A third time, you need to punish them by giving them a disciplinary warning. And, if this carries on you will need to consider letting them go. It really is a matter of the utmost seriousness.

The innocent and unwary

Email scams are increasingly becoming the number one way for cybercriminals to bust into your business. They need to fool people into opening their emails and or clicking a link. You would be surprised at how closely they are able to mimic even company emails. This is why you need to have an IT service that can sift through emails with malware, spyware and viruses. If you click here you’ll see a range of options that are highly recommended by those in the industry. Customizable solutions so they fit your infrastructure and software. They are also full of features such as collaboration apps, group chat and calendars. With such protection in place, it will give your employees clarity of what email is safe and not safe.

Reporting suspicious behavior

Employees should be encouraged to report any kind of suspicious activity. So many data losses have occurred because an employee suspected something odd but didn’t report it and hey presto, they were right. Give your employees the confidence to report to their managers, even the smallest oddities. It's better to be safe than sorry.

A company culture that takes employee responsibility seriously, will not tolerate machines that have been left open while still logged on. You must start disciplining employees who fail to see the danger of this.