In the lead-up to Safer Internet Day, which this year falls on the 11th of February, it’s the perfect time to take a step back and assess your business’s online safety practices.
Investing in Cyber Security Awareness Training
One way to improve your online safety is to invest in cyber security awareness training for your team. Ensuring this training covers a well-designed and wide curriculum in areas such as social engineering, key legislation, authentication security and data protection methods is critical to its success. Delivery is also important, as it ensures that engaging and varied methods are used, such as interactive modules, gamified delivery, and simulations of real attacks to cater to all employees’ different learning styles.
However, getting it right can be hugely beneficial to your business, with a recent study showing a 70% decrease in security-related risks.
Investing in Technical Cyber Security Controls
Technical controls act as a first line of defence, aiming to block cyber threats before they even reach your system. Implementing measures like proactive operating system patching and application patching minimises available vulnerabilities for cyber criminals to be able to exploit. Services like firewalls and email threat protection aim to block malicious websites or emails, preventing a user from accessing or interacting with the harmful content enclosed.
These technical controls, when implemented and managed correctly, form a layer of protection for your whole team.
Develop and Implement Strong Online Safety Habits
Online Safety Habits are important for all aspects of modern life, especially in business, where you are handling both your own and other people’s data regularly. Safer Internet Day provides an excellent opportunity to think about your habits and make changes.
This process starts with assessing your passwords and ensuring that they are complex and vary for each online account you or your team have. It is also essential to enable multifactor authentication for all online accounts to add an extra layer of security, making it significantly harder for unauthorised access even if a password is compromised.
Another is being cautious about what information is shared online; cybercriminals use the internet and social media as research platforms. Think about what an outsider could find out about your business from these platforms; for example, many businesses share which technologies they use on job adverts or may share photos on social media where a cybercriminal could see an ID badge. This knowledge could then be used to orchestrate a more targeted and likely more successful attack.
How CTRL-S Can Help
CTRL-S has the tools to help your business.
Our Cyber Security training program, Cyber Wise, is built from the ground up to inspire a culture of security awareness and collaboration across your business, and our Cyber Security technical controls are included within the Cyber Protect packages we offer.
We also offer innovative tools, such as Keeper Password Manager, which allows you a central location to store, share, and manage passwords. We also offer dark web breach monitoring to make online safety habits easy to implement across your full team.
We recommend using Safer Internet Day as an opportunity to assess both your own and your team’s current online safety and to understand the high importance of getting it right. Getting into the right habits ensures your own, your team’s and your client’s personal data and trust remains intact.
However, don’t feel the need to wait until Safer Internet Day; get in touch with CTRL-S to kickstart your online safety journey today!
