Since 2004, October is recognized as Cybersecurity Awareness Month. I’ve blogged before about the journey our clients take when it comes to a culture of overall safety. But cyber safety is an entirely different dimension of safety for a company and its employees.
Cyber experts acknowledge employees are the weakest link when it comes to keeping a company cyber safe. According to Forbes, one of the most common ways hackers find their way into a company is through social engineering – that means by manipulating one of the employees to release confidential information.
Because cybersecurity impacts every single person in your company, each individual needs to see cyber safety as a personal responsibility. It is not something only IT needs to worry about. Every employee has a part to play in developing a culture of cyber safety.
At PeopleResults, we help our clients communicate these messages to change behavior and drive this mind shift in their organizations.
What does this mean to you?
According to the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA), you can take these four actions:
- Think Before You Click: Recognize and Report Phishing: When a link looks a little off, think before you click. It could be an attempt to get sensitive information or install malware.
- Update Your Software: Don’t delay — When you see a software update notification, act promptly. Better yet, turn on automatic updates.
- Use Strong Passwords: Use passwords that are long, unique, and randomly generated. Use password managers to generate and remember different, complex passwords for each of your accounts. A passwords manager will encrypt passwords securing them for you!
- Enable Multi-Factor Authentication: You need more than a password to protect your online accounts, and enabling MFA makes you significantly less likely to get hacked.
This year’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month campaign theme is “See Yourself in Cyber”. It applies to every person and every family. Don’t be the weakest link.