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Employees are Your First Line of Cybersecurity Defense

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EJ Phillips

Making sure that your team of employees is cyber aware is more critical now than ever before. Between phishing scams and ransomware attacks, a data breach could be just one click away. Cybercriminals are utilizing social engineering techniques to target employees as entry points to company networks. While it is vital to have your networks protected by firewalls, anti-virus tools, and things like malware scanners, technology alone cannot stop the fact that sometimes your employees are going to click on the wrong things.

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Cybersecurity is a team sport

No longer can IT Security simply be left up to the IT guy or department. Cybersecurity truly must be a human resource level enterprise and part of new employee training and ongoing trainings programs.

Your employees need to be able to spot potential malware attacks and know how to deploy best practices against the threats of data breaches and infiltration as part of a broader risk prevention program. All employees, from entry level to the C-Suite, need to view themselves as the first line of defense against hacking and cybersecurity infiltration.

Continuous Training is a Must

Email is by far the most common way bad actors enter a system. They send a phishing email and an employee clicks an unsafe link or gives away precious log-in credentials thinking they are replying to a legitimate email from a co-worker. Therefore, conducting a regular phishing campaign, wherein your team is “tested” by fake phishing scams (performed by an MSP like pim), can give you real world knowledge of where your weak links are and reiterate to your employees what these scams look like.

Phishing Campaigns to train your employees

Attackers relentlessly target organizations with spam, phishing, and advanced socially engineered attacks, with 41% of IT professionals reporting phishing attacks at least daily. Your end users are often an easy target and the weakest link in your cyber defenses.

Your online safety and data security are pim’s number one priority. We offer a phishing campaign in order to let your know exactly where your vulnerabilities are.

learn more about pim phishing campaigns!

What does a pim phishing campaign include?

  • Simulate realistic and challenging phishing attacks to your organization
  • Automated reporting on phishing campaign
  • Top level campaign results
  • Organizational trend of caught employees and reporters
  • Total users caught
  • Testing coverage
  • Days since last campaign

A phishing campaign helps you determine your weakest link. Users continue to be the easiest target for attackers in the cybersecurity defenses of most organizations, but an army of trained, phishing-aware employees can provide you with a human firewall against these threats. This campaign utilizes Sophos Phish Threat, which emulates a range of phishing attack types to help you identify areas of weakness in your organization’s security. Once you see what emails are being responded to that shouldn’t be, you can then train the weakest link!

Click Smart

Train your employees to be smart online. Remind them to physically secure their devices by not leaving them unattended in or in unsecure areas, especially if they work remotely. Focus your efforts on identifying the types of attacks they may encounter and also how to contact your IT professionals when they encounter something they suspect is malicious.

Here are some other training tips for your employees:

Be skeptical

The old adage is right: if it appears too good to be true, it probably isn’t, be it email, web page, or social media post.

Ask questions

  • Do I know this sender?
  • Do I recognize anyone else who has been copied on this email?
  • Are others copied on this email in some type of grouping like all their first names start with the same letter?
  • Does the subject line make sense?
  • Is the domain name spelled correctly?
  • Do I normally receive emails from this sender?
  • Is the email a response to an email I never sent?
  • Did you receive this email at an add time, like 3 a.m. on a Sunday?
  • Does the email have an unnecessary sense of urgency?

Think Before You Click

Unless you are confident of the sender, do not click on a link within an email or open an attachment.

Practice Password Best Practices

Remember our favorite adage about passwords: Passwords are like underwear—change them often, don’t share them, and the best ones are exotic.

Keep Your Software Updated

Make sure all software is up to date and install necessary security patches on ALL devices.

Add an extra layer of protection

Utilize multi-factor authentication whenever possible to stop hackers even if they get your password.

Taking the time to make sure that everyone on your team is aware of cybersecurity best practices is vital for maintaining your privacy. You can create a stronger line of defense against threats with a well-trained staff. Make what could be a vulnerability an asset! Employees needn’t be your weakest link.




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