8 Critical Security Awareness Training Tips for Your Employees

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While we would all like to believe that the world is a safe and welcoming place, there are plenty of people that would like to take advantage of security flaws.

Making sure that your employees have proper security awareness training is a must to keep your company safe. Your employees could unknowingly open up your company to risks.

Continue reading this article to learn training tips for your employees.

Must-Know Security Awareness Training Tips

If you fail to put your employees through proper training and they make mistakes that hurt your company, much of the responsibility is on you. The following tips will help you help your employees succeed in security.

1. Don’t Leave It on the Desk

You may have heard that a messy desk is a sign of genius. Whether a messy desk is truly a sign of genius or not — it’s not a sign of good security.

Even if everything stays on your desk, people may take photos of sensitive information or read things that could hurt the company. Having a policy that you don’t leave anything out on the desk will protect your company from unauthorized eyes.

Put papers away into filing cabinets or scan them into your computer for safekeeping.

2. Create a Policy for Personal Devices

Many employees bring their personal devices into the workplace. Whether it’s their mobile device, cameras or other technology they bring in, your company needs to make sure to protect themselves against any challenges that might arise.

Make sure your employees understand that each mobile device is not totally secure. While most people know to lock their mobile devices, that isn’t always going to be enough.

Create a list of devices that are secure enough to be within the building and approve or disapprove any devices that are brought for verification.

Notify employees that their devices are being monitored for their safety and the security of the company.

3. Removable Media

Removable media seems like an innocent enough piece of tech if you aren’t aware all of the things it can do.

Your employee finds a thumb drive on the way into the office. Hmm… who does this belong to?

They plug it in and before you know it — the system is overtaken by malware or some other bug that spies on network activity.

4. Online Safety

No matter how tech-savvy your employees are, you may find they aren’t practicing online safety.

Even if you think the training is going to be redundant, you should still have the training since even one person in the crowd not knowing one of the tips could mean a major debacle.

Phishing is a big problem since many scams are getting more sophisticated. If there are common scams going around the internet, make sure to make your team members aware of them.

Have your employees disable pop-ups since they can cause harm and rarely do any good.

Employees should know not to install software onto the computers — especially from sources that are unfamiliar.

5. Data Management

Depending on the company, you may be storing an excessive amount of information. While this information can be helpful to the company, if there is a breach in the data, you could experience legal actions from the people whose information you compromised.

Your employees should learn about the different types of information your company holds. They also need to think about the levels of importance of the different types of data and how closely they need to guard it.

6. Physical

The threats to security aren’t always outside of the company. There may be new hires or other people that aren’t allowed access to some parts of the company that try to “shoulder surf” or get information from others.

Teaching your employees to be aware of those around them as well as how they access sensitive information will allow you to decrease the amount of information unauthorized people get their hands on.

All employees should know not to leave their password-protected computers open but instead, shut them down when not in use.

7. Social Networks

If you have people managing your social networks, you need to check that they are properly trained to avoid phishing schemes. Social media opens your company up to a world of promotion but also a lot of scams as well.

Getting in trouble with people through social media may also put your employee’s account in danger of getting hacked so let them know to change their passwords frequently. Also, implement a maximum security password so your employees aren’t hacked and exploited because of an easy password.

8. Hoaxes

Hoaxes can get employees into major trouble since they might believe there is already a problem that needs to be dealt with. The person running the hoax might tell them that they have gotten into some kind of trouble and then try to extort the employee. They may also position themselves as the solution to their problem.

The Importance of Proper Training

Make sure to be thorough in all of your training and do regular check-ins and make sure everyone remembers all of the most important points of security. It just takes one person to let security get lax and your company could be at risk.

Learn More About Growing Your Business

Now that you know these great security awareness training tips, why not keep the learning going? Navigate through our blog and find your favorite sections to bookmark and read more of our content later.

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