Partner Article

The cyber do’s and don’ts in the office over christmas

Although most employees will be heading home for a well-deserved break this Christmas, many will be working in the office during the festive period and some will undoubtedly be taking projects home with them to catch up on deadlines.

With employees increasingly shopping on work devices as well as bringing their own devices onto business networks, what can you do as a business to reduce the risk? Kevin Bailey, Head of Market Strategy at Clearswift offers his thoughts on how businesses can stay safe during the holidays….

Christmas presents the perfect opportunity for online retailers to end the year on a profit high and for us consumers, to spend, spend, spend, before and during the holidays. But it’s not just the retailers that like to take advantage during the season of goodwill.

This busy online shopping period, the busiest since records began, also provides the perfect opportunity for cyber criminals; gifting us with too-good-to-be-true offers by emails and scams that put businesses at risk when staff are shopping, browsing or socialising on line.

A recent article in the Daily Telegraph quotes Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan Howe warning in a recent statement that “…cyber-crime is the growth industry of the criminal underworld”, emphasising how cyber criminals target Christmas shoppers in particular.

Scams are becoming a familiar headline in our daily news as cyber criminals are becoming more and more sophisticated in their tactics. So, just as the Christmas season is as the peak sales period for retailers, it’s also the period which offers the most potential and profit for scammers.

It’s vital that companies acknowledge the increase in vulnerability to cyber-attacks during this period, as employees are desperately last minute shopping online and during the sales period over the holidays. Just as we mentioned in the recent Clearswift blog on Operation Waking Shark 2, it’s the weak point in the value chain that cyber criminals will target. So, even if they’re not after your employees’ details, they may well be looking for a way into your organisation’s network.

It’s essential to instill a strong IT policy which is clearly visible throughout the organisation on a daily basis, and encourage communication around the issue of IT and security. As well as ensuring your security software is up-to-date, ensure these simple key points are communicated to staff to ensure business safety.

• Only shop on websites you know and trust
• Use a different password each time you register for a new shopping site
• Check if the URL contains HTTPS- the “S” stands for secure and adds an extra level of protection
• On social media - don’t use the same password for multiple accounts, and try to create complex ones, with a variety of letters and numbers - changing them at regular intervals. Also, password protect your mobile device!

Ensuring that these simple measures are in place will help ensure that your business remains as safe as possible during the festive period and Christmas is a much-needed break, not a cyber-security disaster!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clearswift .