You might be surprised that many security issues could originate from within your organization. A major contributor is user error, which can lead to some pretty severe problems reaching from your data security, to your workflow, all the way to the continuation of your business itself.

From an employee accidentally clicking the wrong link in an email to accessing business data they have no reason to use, user error can span from accidental to outright malicious. This is made worse when a business neglects to remove a former employee from the system, allowing that employee continued access to the network, or selling access credentials to highest bidder. For these reasons, every business needs to be prepared to deal with user error, or worse.

Keep Access To Who Needs It
It doesn’t make sense to allow open access to your network, as not every member of your staff needs to have access to everything. Employees should not be able to access your team’s payroll information, as it could cause some issue between coworkers. This is just one example of what your workforce should not have access to, as there is plenty of other sensitive, personal information that a business stores.

The best means of keeping eyes off of the information, that they aren’t supposed to see, is to keep your infrastructure partitioned, so that employees can only access the information needed for tasks. Your IT provider can help you do this, so be sure to ask about access control solutions.

Restrict Permissions for Those Who Don’t Need Them
If your users were on their personal computers that weren’t a part of a Bring-Your-Own-Device policy, it wouldn’t matter to you what they were downloading. However, business workstations need to follow a much different set of rules. What apps are downloaded, and what effect they would have on your business? These programs could easily be disguised malware or remote access programs that give hackers an easy way into your systems.

To counter this, place limits on what your employees can do with their workstations. Administrative access should be reserved to your network administrator and any IT technicians who are a part of your organization. They are the ones who need these permissions, after all, to make changes to your network in the form of new devices and software.

Remove Employee Credentials
It’s inevitable that people will come and go from your company. If you don’t update or remove permissions, you could set yourself up for major problems. Can you risk that a former fired employee won’t pettily attempt some form of sabotage? It’s much easier to remove this person’s access from every network-attached system you have; before he or she leaves, if possible.

Can your business deal with negligence and animosity to prosper? Of course, but why risk it? CTN Solutions can help you keep the negative results of user error to minimum. To learn more, call us today at (610) 828-5500.