The Importance of Applying Cybersecurity Best Practices for Employees in Your Company to Stay Safe

As businesses embrace digital transformation, cybersecurity best practices for employees become more and more important. It’s essential that everyone in your organization, from top executives to entry-level employees, are aware of the potential risks and take steps to ensure the company’s network security.

There are a number of cybersecurity best practices that your employees can adopt to help keep your company safe. Here are just a few of the most important ones:

1. Implement Strong Passwords and Never Reuse Them

Employees will often use the same password for different accounts. That leaves your company vulnerable to attacks and is a poor cybersecurity best practice. Strong password practices include setting passwords that are unique and cannot be easily guessed, changing them frequently or when an employee leaves the company and adding multi-factor authentication whenever possible.

2. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication to Keep Accounts Safe

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a powerful tool that can help prevent data breaches to your employee’s accounts. MFA requires employees to use two or more different factors to authenticate themselves, such as a password and a fingerprint. When a hacker tries to break into an account that has MFA enabled, they will be stopped unless they have access to all of the different authentication factors.

3. Recognize and Respond Appropriately to Malicious Links and Attachments

Malicious links and attachments are part of phishing attacks. These types of attacks can be difficult for employees to recognize. A crucial aspect of cybersecurity best practices is training employees on how to recognize malicious links and attachments and to never click on them.

Some signs that reveal the link or attachment might be malicious are odd-looking URLs, misspelled words, and a suspicious sender. If employees find any of these signs, they should avoid clicking on the link or downloading the attachment and notify IT staff immediately.

4. Regularly Keep Your Software Up-to-Date

Updated software patches vulnerabilities in your systems and networks and is crucial to keep your company secure. While updating software may seem like a tedious task, updated software makes it harder for cybercriminals to find opportunities to exploit your systems.

Make sure employees understand the importance of keeping their systems updated with the latest patches, and set up a schedule to ensure that all software is regularly updated.

5. Backup Documents and Other Important Data

Data backups are an essential cybersecurity best practice that employees should not overlook. The average cost of a data breach in the United States is over $9 million. A data breach not only costs the company a lot of money but significantly slows down operations as employees attempt to locate lost data or recreate it from memory.

Additionally, employees should be aware of where your backups are stored and how they can be accessed if needed to restore lost data. By backing up important data, you can prevent the loss of critical information if a cyber attack occurs.

Strengthen Your Cybersecurity with Total IT

At Total IT, we understand the importance of cybersecurity best practices for employees to keep your company safe against cyber criminals. That’s why we offer a comprehensive and tailored cybersecurity solution that includes employee training, malware protection, and more. Schedule a consultation today with one of our expert IT representatives to learn how you can strengthen your cybersecurity.