Cyber security: it’s everyone’s job

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A well set up network and advice from professional IT support can be a good step towards protecting your business from malicious attacks. They can make sure the worst malware doesn't get through, and save you a lot of hassle and expense in the long run. But there are steps you can take yourself to help reduce your risk, and it starts with basic training for all staff.

For example, stress the importance of password security. It's a bad idea for staff to use the same password they use for everyday emails and social media if they're accessing sensitive information - however secure you are around the office, there's no guarantee what could happen out of hours. Randomly generated passwords may be best, though they can be difficult to remember. It's length, rather than complexity, that generally makes a password trickier to crack, so strings of random words may work well. If your office is pretty up to date with technology, you may want to consider two-stage authentication using smartphones. This provides a one-time, limited duration code sent directly to the user in addition to their regular password. This reduces risk significantly by making attacks from afar much more difficult - they need to be in possession of the employee's phone, as well as their password, to do any harm. While in the creative industries it might be highly useful for employees to be able to install software and other items (e.g. fonts) on to their work machine, you should take care about how much freedom they're given. In general, it's best not to allow them to install software until your IT support has taken a look and given it the all clear. It's much better to be safe than sorry - that new font can always wait a couple of hours. It's likely there still might be people out there who mean you or your business servers harm. But they're much easier to deal with if the IT support managing your computer networks can focus their efforts on major attacks, thanks to employees taking care of the small stuff themselves.

Cyber Security - Tablet by perspec_photo88 licensed under Creative commons 5