For all the security measures that are taken, for all the hundreds of firewalls and security protocols that are placed by the cyber security staff to safeguard an organizations network, yet the most unpredictable variable of them all, which remains unaccounted for is the Human Error. This makes employees the weakest link in cyber security.
Hackers have trained themselves well to take advantage of a company’s employees, through various factors like social engineering, bad actors within one’s organization or human error. Irrespective of the fact that they might be tech-savvy or not, the lack of knowledge about cybercrimes hurt individual and in turn the organizations that they represent.
The Weakest link in Cyber Security – The Employees
A famous cryptographer, Bruce Schneier got to the root of the problem faced by cyber security personnel’s across the globe when he famously quoted, ”Only amateurs attack machines, professionals target people.”
Reports have emerged worldwide claiming that security breaches are often resulted due to employee error, proving them to be the greatest risk of them all.
These security lapses are not always due to malicious intent towards the employees, rather its due to ignorance on the proper ways to protect oneself and their corporate network while they are connected to the world wide web.
So how does a company account for unintentional error while being vigilant against the many threats posed by compromised internal staff?
Mitigating the problem
By enforcing employee training and implementing proper vetting protocols are key to mitigating employee-related issues, since it negates the hiring of malicious actors, right at the source. Similarly, an effective training protocol should be put in place to help bring the non-security employees to speed with the risk they face and the responsibilities they are entrusted with while ensuring corporate security protocols are followed. In this way, a company can protect its network from intentional and unintentional attacks due to human error.
Here are some techniques that would help a company protect its data from external and internal threats:
Smart Emailing Protocols: Sometimes hackers might attempt to hijack the identities of senior management employees or senior staff members and impersonate them in emails to their employees across various teams within an organization. They might send a malicious mail using the manager’s address, expecting the junior employees to respond. Employees can fight against this by replying with a fresh email to the concerned higher official, apprising him of any potential security breaches and allow the security personnel’s to fix the issues before it could cause any harm.
Predicting Employee Behavior: In an advanced age of computers and artificial intelligence, computers are getting better at figuring human behavior since we generally tend to work in a specific pattern. Threats could be attended at a faster rate, given analytics and machines learning can detect anomalies in employee behavior and the security staff could look into potential threats.
Knowing the biggest potential security woes: A company should regularly perform audits of their security systems, to keep track of the areas which are more vulnerable to attacks. By taking this step, the security personnel can devote more time and attention towards these departments, ensuring that they are trained and secured, so they could negate any potential mistakes that could occur.
In the era of ever-evolving threats from the internet, there is never going to be a scenario where every employee would be a security expert. Hence, an organization should always opt for a complete security solution that would take care of a company’s security needs proactively while also taking steps to educate their employees to remain vigilant against any attacks that might be lurking in the shadows.
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