Nobody’s Perfect: How to Protect Yourself from User Error

As the old adage says, ‘no one is perfect.’ This often applies to people who lock their keys in the car or turn their laundry pink, but it’s a little more problematic when human slip-ups put your small business at risk.

In fact, 95 percent of all cybersecurity incidents involve human error. While that figure may frighten you, there are steps you can take to safeguard your organization against employee-linked data breaches.

Boost Your Cyber Smarts

Employee education is absolutely vital to protecting your small business. This can be done in a number of ways. While some companies choose to walk new hires through cybersecurity training during their first week, other companies may host quarterly or yearly cybersecurity training meetings to refresh everyone’s memories about best practices.

Impress upon your employees the importance of avoiding opening emails from unknown or suspicious sources. Cybercriminals are avid spammers, and their emails frequently contain links and attachments meant to infect your computer with dangerous malware. Phishing scams are included in URLs in an attempt to deceive employees into sharing their passwords and login information.

Some hackers, who are trickier than others, will use spoofing to pose as a friend or coworkers in emails or text messages. The lie is made even more convincing by redirecting the user to fraudulent phishing pages made to look identical to the real thing. The goal, of course, is to fool your team members into divulging valuable information.

While digital threats continue to evolve as do the methods to combat them. Continued cybersecurity training will ready your team to be aware of any risk.

Cut the Phishing Line

But even with the best cybersecurity protocols, accidents happen. Sometimes it’s a careless click, or maybe your employee fell prey to an extra crafty ploy. No matter the case, your business information has been compromised by a phishing attack. What do you do? To remove yourself from a phishing scam:

Begin with changing your passwords immediately: Don’t allow the hacker to gain further access to your other accounts.

Be sure to repot the incident right away: The faster you act, the better your chances of limiting the damage.

Next, check your ‘sent’ email folder: Make sure your contacts haven’t been spammed using your good name.

Finally, do a security sweep: This will uncover any malware programs that may have been downloaded without your knowledge.

Purging Malware & Trojans

Oh no! Your sweep revealed malware infections on your device. It may have even been living inside your computer, undetected for months. Symptoms include slow performance, advertising pop-ups when browsers are closed and bogus security warning from programs you didn’t install.

Removing malware can be incredibly time consuming. So let’s get started.

The first step is to update your antivirus software: The most recent update will better combat whatever is infecting your computer.

Restart your computer in safe mode: This will stop malware from spreading while you hunt down its roots. Start by deleting temporary files. Be sure to investigate any files or programs unfamiliar to you.

While this may be enough to detect and exterminate your computer bug, it is likely that you may need to download additional security software to relieve your system. A computer professional will be able to help you if necessary.

Explore Cybersecurity Insurance Quotes

As you can tell, cyberattacks consume your time and resources, costing your small business thousands in damages and downtime. Shield yourself by investigating cyber security insurance quotes. Providers even offer protection against extortion and reputational damage.

Cyber security quotes may vary, but are very affordable compared to risk posed by cybercriminals. Besides, investing pennies a day is infinitely preferable to dropping tens of thousands of dollars on data breach.