How safe is your organisation online?
Table of Contents
Our guide to improving online security
In awareness of Safer Internet Day, we have put together 5 tips and resources to stay safer online for businesses and their employees.
‘The aim of Safer Internet Day is to inspire a national conversation about using technology responsibly, respectfully, critically and creatively.’
We want to contribute to the cause and shed some light on how organisations can improve their online safety.
1. Cyber Security for businesses
One of the most important aspects of being safe online is ensuring your business’ security is maintained. Uninformed employees can make mistakes online, leaving your organisation’s data at risk.
We’d recommend implementing staff training within your prevention plan. By informing staff of the key dangers to watch out for, there is less room for human error.
There are a number of training programmes to keep your staff educated around cybersecurity. Try the free Introduction into Cybersecurity for Business course by Coursera.
2. Passwords and Multi-factor Authentication
Does your enterprise have a strong internal Password Policy? You may believe employees are safe and use unique phrases for different platforms. However, businesses need to be more diligent than the average internet user.
Educate your staff on how to keep their passwords safe by:
- Not allowing any passwords to be written in unsafe places, e.g post-it notes, internal documents and emails.
- Encouraging the use of Password Management tools as a safe place to store passwords.
- Setting systems to automatically request password updates on a regular basis
- Enabling multi-factor authentication. This will add another layer of security and send a unique code to employee mobile devices.
- Ensuring that all passwords are complex and are made up of at least 8 letters including special characters.
The longer the combination, the more time it takes to for cybercriminals to crack your password.
3. Fake Websites and Phishing
We may think we know how to detect a phishing website. The truth is, new sophisticated systems are making fake content harder to detect and more of a risk.
Keeping up to date on the recent ways criminals can mask fake sites and emails is critical to staying safe online. Learning about how to tell if a site is genuine is imperative to prevent malware attacks.
- Pay close attention to the URL – does the domain look trustworthy?
- Check who the site is registered to. WHOIS is a free example of a domain search tool.
- Trusted payment methods – does the site have reputable financial options embedded such as PayPal?
- Look out for malicious pop-out ads that could link to dangerous websites.
- Install anti-virus on all employee devices and keep it up-to-date.
4. Practice Safe Website Searching
Always be on the lookout for SSL certificates to evaluate whether a website is secure. Company websites with HTTPS encryption are far safer to use.
Be wary of inputting sensitive information. Only input your details if you are convinced a website is genuine, otherwise, you could be giving sensitive information away.
Look for 2 things:
- The lock icon by a site’s URL, this indicates a site is safe to use.
- The https:// protocol before the site’s domain.
If you are still unsure if a site is safe to use. Do not use it.
5. Use Available Resources
The internet can have a lot of risks to your business, but if you look in the right places, it can also provide a lot of benefits. Getsafeonline.org has created a document with the basics of your business needs to know about how to be safe online. The guide includes examples of how to plan your cybersecurity scenarios and what to do if you have been breached.
View and download their cybersecurity document.
With these resources, we hope you learn a little more on how to stay safe online this safer internet day.
