SMB Cyber Security Training & Policies
Acquiring secure IT services to promote cybersecurity is a good step to ensure your company is protected from malicious forces. Professionals who provide secure IT services will be there to guide you and your workforce in keeping all endpoints and networks worry-free. However, the effort to make sure cybersecurity is maintained should not rest solely on secure IT services providers. It is the end-users who should be even more careful, as it is they who roam company networks and use online resources. Companies can lose a lot with employee negligence, but such errors can be avoided. Through well-planned cybersecurity training, awareness and vigilance does not rest solely on secure IT services providers.
Secure IT Services: Cyber Security Training
Building a culture of cybersecurity is integral to make sure that the entire workforce is calibrated when it comes to cybersecurity knowledge. While training may include how to use company resources and provided secure IT services, it can also dig deep with cybersecurity basics like how employees can be safe at home as well, and how they can promote a secure lifestyle in and outside of work. Professionals who handle secure IT services can take the lead in these trainings, with some collaboration with company leaders.
Secure IT Services: Constant Follow-Ups
What transpires in one training session can immediately be applied, as time goes by, these tidbits of cybersecurity knowledge may fade. Companies may fail in instilling a habit of cybersecurity mindedness within the workforce without adequate follow-up. Sessions that aim to remind the workforce of cybersecurity basics need not be actual sessions. These can be in the form of email newsletters, company-wide memos, even short instructions sent to team and department leaders to disseminate to their members. Efforts to follow-up need not come from your hired secure IT services providers. Strategic ways to look after the workforce can be effective, albeit simple.
Secure IT Services: Personal yet Professional
A noteworthy way to make cybersecurity impactful is to bring it to a personal level, yet connect it to how it affects one’s professional matters. Negligence in keeping one’s personal gadgets secure may end up bringing viruses and malware to the office. This is a common occurrence for those who use company gadgets for personal affairs e.g. using the office computer to open social media accounts, or using company internet for personal affairs, like booking flights or online shopping. Chances are, these “bad habits” can ultimate affect one’s personal online life, and also their work-related online resources, such as cloud storage and company email accounts. This lack of awareness can be noticed in age gaps, as more senior employees seem to be less adept in practicing cybersecurity measures than younger professionals. Secure IT services providers can be tapped in approaching this age gap, and also in emphasizing in general that personal bad habits can bite one back when brought in the office. Your personal cybersecurity errors may come back as a company-wide problem, and there’s no greater shame in knowing you included many people in a singular error.
Secure IT Services: Encourage Error Reporting
Through training, secure IT services professionals can emphasize the need to be proactive and vigilant. Slight cybersecurity threats can balloon into major threats, and the enterprise workforce must be pushed to speak up even at the slightest suspicion. There is a bit of shame when one has to admit that they may be the cause for a certain virus or malware to penetrate company networks, but rather than seeing the trouble snowball, nipping it in the bud through professional honesty is the better act. Incident report forms may also be created to promote anonymity when there are specific instances to be reported. Training must make sure that professional honesty and vigilance is part of the cybersecurity culture that is upheld. Company leaders and secure IT services providers must work together to put this habit front and center.
Secure IT Services: Cyber Security Policies
Now that an internal knowledge and awareness of cybersecurity has been instilled, external forces to encourage maintenance of a cyber-secure workforce, alongside reprimanding bad habits and negligence, are compulsory. Policies can be executed to keep cybersecurity as robust as possible. You may work with secure IT services providers to help you in coming up with policies, or in writing down details of suggested policies below:
Secure IT Services: Acceptable Use Policy
Put a strict, discernible line between websites, apps, and other internet-related resources that allowed or not in the office. Some social media sites may appear more personal than professional in terms of use, or the office can agree on what browser to use so that configurations are uniform for all computers. Identifying which websites or apps to use limits gateways for hacker or malware to enter.
Secure IT Services: Confidential Data Policy
Ultimately identify what kind of information stays in the office, and nowhere else. Company secrets and industry processes that took years to perfect must not reach competitors in any way. This specific policy will make sure that company data are kept where they should be kept, and will not reach areas vulnerable to cybersecurity threats.
Secure IT Services: Email Policy
Controlling as well what kind of email service providers will help in maintaining company data. While not all businesses are able to come up with a private email domain, executing email laws will uphold cybersecurity standards.
Secure IT Services: BYOD/Telecommuting Policy
There is merit in the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) scheme, as it promotes employees to use gadgets there are more accustomed to in promoting work efficiency and mobility. However, a policy to govern security measures for these gadgets will support this request to use one’s own laptop or tablet to meet workload deadlines. Secure IT services providers may come up with ways to give access to antivirus program installations or do routinary scanning of gadgets that aren’t company-owned.
Secure IT Services: Wireless Network and Guest Access Policy
Non-company personnel will come in once in a while, such as industry partners or potential clients. Assigning which internet connections they are limited to is a valid way of promoting the company’s cybersecurity. Another way would be to come up with temporary connections that only function during a specific period. Some companies opt for this when they host events within company premises.
Secure IT Services: Exiting Staff Procedures
Employees come and go, but your company’s human resources team must work with your IT team or your IT provider to cut a former employee’s “IT trail”, such as deactivating company email accounts and making sure personal gadgets are banned from connecting to company networks. These processes should be part of clearance whenever an individual severs their professional relationships with the company.
Protecting your enterprise’s cybersecurity sounds like a tall order, but the repercussions of being lax are massive. A proactive approach should be in place, and it should come from company leaders and administrators.
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