Five steps employees can take to protect against cybersecurity threats

No one wants to come into their office one morning and find out that their company has been a victim of a security attack. Losing customer data or having proprietary information revealed – these can be disastrous.

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, there have been more than 450 data breaches so far in 2016, which have exposed more than 12 million records that contain sensitive material.

Cyber security is a hot topic in the business world, but there are things that employees can do to lessen the likelihood or impact of a security breach.

Steps to protect from cyber security breach

1. Use a strong antivirus program and run scans at least weekly.

2. Use spam filters and ignore suspicious messages. Do not click links that seem questionable, and do not click links on websites that ask for personal information.

3. Back up all files regularly. In the event of a problem, you can get your computer up and running again with little loss of information.

4. Create complex passwords. When using passwords to protect files, make sure that you use a password people can’t often guess. Mixing letters, numbers and symbols is often the way to go.

5. Learn to recognize a cyber attack and notify IT. There are different types of attacks that can put your company’s systems at risk. A Denial of Service (DOS) or Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) often presents with slow internet, slow or nonexistent access to the company’s servers and websites that just don’t work. A virus attack can cause programs to run slowly, allow rampant and unexpected pop-ups, and crash systems.