After you've shaken the hand of the smiling and seemingly good-natured job candidate you've just hired, you believe your business will continue to grow and to become a respectable establishment in the community.
A few months pass by. The candidate you had been so excited about hiring is not excited by their work, and their apathy has begun to affect the rest of the staff. After a having a heartfelt discussion with the employee, you again believe the company is on the right track once more. Then, unexpectedly, you learn you've been hit by a cyberattack. You contact your insurance agent immediately after you discover the breach and they assure you that your cyber data breach coverage will cover the damages.
Later, during the cyber breach investigation, it's learned that the leak happened from inside the business. Who was the culprit? The new employee. They had been funneling information about the company in the hopes of sharing it with a competitor. To cover up their tracks, they hit the network with malware.
What steps can you take to safeguard the company against such attacks again?
Taking Cover: Protecting the Company
According to a survey conducted by AlgoSec in 2012, most cybersecurity chiefs believe there is more cause for alarm when it comes to "low-level insiders" compared to an external, sophisticated, hacking cybercrime ring. In an interview with USA Today, AlgoSec's senior security strategist Sam Erdheim said that "organizations need to have effective policies in place, and the real key is to enforce them. This doesn't completely solve the problem, of course, but it certainly takes away the low hanging fruit."
If you have an employee that is looking for the opportune moment to infiltrate your company's network for information to share, sell or use for blackmail, they will find it. This is why it is of the utmost importance to take proper safety measures to make sure the network is near impossible for them to crack.
Restrict Administrative Access: Not every employee needs to be granted access to the workings of the company's website, data storage or even shared google docs. Keep a record of who does have access and regularly change passwords and security questions to keep employees from sharing vial company data information with each other. Data security should be on a need to know basis.
Conduct Monthly Security Checks: Have your IT run a diagnostics test on the system. If there is anything amiss, have them report the site of the problem immediately. Learn where the weakness was and how it evolved. The IT team should be able to identify and rectify the issue. Immediately change all passwords and access codes.
Allow Only Necessary Internet Applications: Employees will visit their favorite websites at some point during the workday, whether to make an online purchase or watch a cat video. Or as in the case of the black hat, to sell company tools and data on the dark web. Limit unnecessary internet usage by locking potentially dangerous third party sites and any other sites you feel could bring harm to the workplace.
Suffering a data leak won't be the end of the world if you have data breach coverage. Get your free quote when you visit CyberPolicy.
