Recent corporate hacking cases have dominated the headlines and shown that employees are often at the heart of corporate security threats. In the motion picture company’s case, hackers accessed private emails, executive salary details, and employee Social Security numbers, among other sensitive information.
While the case represents a worst-case cyber-attack scenario, it’s a wakeup call for companies of all varieties to shore up security concerns — starting with employees. Forrester Research finds that mistakes by internal employees, not malicious external hackers, caused the most data breaches among survey respondents.
When security breaches put customer data at risk, companies not only face lawsuits and costly downtime, but they lose goodwill and future business. Health care organizations alone lose $5.6 billion per year from data breaches, according to the Ponemon Institute.
It’s important for field service organizations, which increasingly rely on mobile and cloud-based technologies, to help employees understand security vulnerabilities — and effective defenses against them. Here are six tips:
How to Stop Security Breaches?
- Educate
There is no better weapon to stop the security breaches done than by educating the staff about the implications and the repercussions of any violation. If the field staff is aware of the possibly poisonous sweet-talks that people can engage in to gain access to any confidential data, they will be extra careful, and this will prevent any security breaches. This step may fall outside the scope of Technology, but a breach is a breach, irrespective of the channel that was used.
2. Systemize
There is a certain pattern of normal usage of devices, and anything that is outside the pattern defined by a considerable magnitude might be a good indicator of a possible breach of security. While it might not be an explicit Red flag, it is something that will open the eyes of the security personnel to keep an extra-cautious eye on that device.
3. Prioritize security
There are certain cases in which you cannot just prevent a breach of security. In these situations, it would be a great idea to make data less accessible and more difficult to penetrate. Using the right level of encryption of data, especially for the sensitive ones, could be of great help in securing the data even after a possible breach.
4. Go the Extra Step
It might be frustrating for the user to engage in a two-step authentication. However, as Armstrong would say, this one small step for the user is a giant leap in terms of security. People with malicious intentions always find it difficult to crack the second layer of security – the probability of cracking both the walls of security decreases not linearly but exponentially. Most of the experts would agree that two-step authentication is one of the easiest ways to secure your data, especially in the world of the Internet of Things.
5. Understand the possible backdoors
Irrespective of the size of the service that holds the data – be it that of a small startup or that of the National Security Agency, there are certain points of vulnerability. The key here is to stay ahead of the so-called smart people who think they can break in. If you have secured your weakest point, then it can be assumed very safely that the less-vulnerable places have a less possibility of a threat.
6. Stay up to date
It’s quite easy to break into a device that uses outdated technology, as there is not much of security-support for those technologies. It is almost like having a vulnerable point in your data ecosystem. Make sure that all the devices that have been given out to the employees in the field have the latest security update patches, to ensure there is no weak point.
With technology advancement, the threat from criminals and troublemakers is growing in sophistication. But on the bright side, it has also opened a large channel in terms of equipping ourselves against these possible threats. Service organizations that can’t provide the advantages of modern technology will lose business to competitors that can. As the technology continues to astound and advance, let us take advantage of the world of Technology, and at the same time secure ourselves against the possible vulnerabilities.
