October is celebrated as Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which allows security leaders an opportunity to raise fresh initiatives and campaigns around cybersecurity for their businesses.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month begins with employees but it can be difficult to get them engaged with best practices around cybersecurity. With adequate training and awareness, your employees can become first line of defense cyber-crimes.
Let’s go through some of the crucial Cybersecurity Awareness Month tips to spark conversation around how you can adopt best cybersecurity practices at your organization.
- Get rid of your common passwords
Cyber breaches often lead to credentials being stolen. This can be a huge security risk for people who use same set of passwords across multiple accounts. Getting rid of your old passwords and using unique password across multiple account can be a weekend project for your employees and it is absolutely worth the effort.
- Enable multi-factor authentication
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a good opportunity to enable multi-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication involves additional authentication even if someone gets a hold of your password. Multi-factor authentication adds an additional layer of authentication and it is well worth the effort.
- Be wary of links or attachments sent from Unknown sources
Email is the one of the commonly used means through which cybercriminals try to gain access to your system and steal information. Their intent is for the email receiver to click on a link, open an attachment, or download a fake software.
Initiating discussion around caution from email received from unknown sources can be a quick and important discussion with your employees this Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
- Unusual requests are red flags.
Be cautious of any email, be it from your client or boss, which asks you to do something unusual that could breach your organization’s privacy. Cyber-attacks these days commonly used industry-specific jargons and specific organization scenario to gain a false sense of trust.
The general rule of thumb should be to treat emails cautiously unless you are expecting it.
- Prepare a collaborative insider threat prevention campaign
Most organizations face far more risk from lack of caution or training by employees than from actual malice, but it’s still critical to understand the risks both pose. Developing a collaborative culture of training and reporting security risks can prove to be most important cybersecurity protocol for your organization.
- Check data protection policies across departments
Every department of your organization needs data protection. Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a good opportunity for security leaders to become aware of the kind of data dealt across different departments and whether it is protected or not. Be it strategic data, supply chain data, financial data, etc.
- Conduct an external audit
It is critical for all types of business – small, medium or large, to conduct regular audit of security protocols at place. Security leaders can have reliable third-party security protocol analysis team conduct an audit of organization’s security protocols. These external audits can be helpful in knowing if your current security protocols meet the level of security your business requires.
- Continue the cybersecurity conversation year-round, instead of just during Cybersecurity Awareness Month
The key to continue awareness around cybersecurity is to make it a habit, an everyday part of your company’s life. Just like any other habit, it is all about small and continuous shifts that add up to a big impact.
