Cyber Security’s Weakest Link

Dateline: April 14, 2017

Welcome to our Friday WRAP – one thought-provoking idea to think about over the weekend.

Keeping your information systems safe and cyber secure is a challenge under the best of circumstances.  Bad actors abound, trying to steal data, disrupt systems, and general cause chaos.  Building a secure environment is more than just getting the right technology in place.  The people in the system have to be on board, and often they are the weakest link: they are not cyber-aware.  Recently Information Management published a blog titled, “Keep Your Data Safe By Identifying The Threats.”

Your end users, and their devices, represent a very large mobile attack surface. IT and InfoSec professionals spend far too much time cleaning up issues caused by employees who fall for phishing emails, click corrupt links, or engage in careless online behavior. These unintentional “user mistakes” are one of the biggest threats today, causing around 25 percent of data exfiltration events.

Why do users make so many mistakes? To put it simply, most don’t care. They believe that if IT is doing its job, no threats will reach them and they have nothing to worry about. They believe that if they have an error in judgment, or do something foolish, IT will always come to the rescue. They actively ignore security policies and find creative workarounds for security measures they view as an inconvenience.

What can you do to build a culture of cyber security? How can you change the perception that IT security is not inconvenience, but part of the way things are today?

That’s a WRAP!  Have a great weekend!

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