IT Insights

Bad Computer Habits Your Employees Need to Break

Your employees rely on company IT resources to perform their daily tasks. Unfortunately, many of them also have some bad habits. Habits like excessively using social media and browsing personal-interest sites may seem harmless, but in reality they can put your business in jeopardy.

Based on a recent IBM report, 95% of security incidents in US companies were caused by human errors. This clearly indicates that it’s not the lack of hardware and software security that leads to breaches; rather, it’s bad employee IT habits that lead to successful phishing attacks or virus infections.

You may not be able to fully control how your staff use company IT resources, but you can implement reasonable policies to ensure the safety of your precious company data.

Sending personal email at work

Your IT department may have put proper safeguards in place to protect company email from phishing scams and malware, but not for your employees’ personal email. Business owners have good reason to be concerned about email security and are wise to implement certain safeguards, and cutting back on personal emailing at work actually benefits the employees as much as it does the company.

Staff should simply be required to send personal email using their own devices when at work. Aside from preventing the risk of leaking confidential business files, limiting personal email on office computers also reduces the risks of exposing their personal correspondences and data internally.

Storing company files on personal storage platforms

When your employees store work files on their own cloud storage accounts, they unwittingly put your network and your confidential company data at risk. Even if they use popular platforms like Google Drive or Dropbox, your employees have no control over the security of company-owned files in the case of a widespread breach.

This is also worrying for businesses in regulated industries with strict data privacy rules, and could be made worse when employees don’t back up their files in accordance with company standards.

At Sabio, our technicians have deep IT and business expertise. We don’t just tell our small-business clients in Florida that we back up their data using state-of-the-art storage equipment, but we also explain the repercussions of a data breach to their business.

Using one password for all programs and apps

Your employees log on to several applications to do their work, and many of them are probably using one password for them all. This risky habit puts your business in danger because one password is all it takes for hackers to take over your entire network.

You should therefore take extra precaution by using advanced encryption tools or setting a company-wide rule that makes creating different passwords for every application mandatory. Breaking this habit of using one password for everything doesn’t just increase safety, it also reduces cybersecurity costs.

Not shutting down computers

Some employees leave their PC or laptop on sleep mode after a day’s work so they can easily log back on the following day. Like humans, computers need to recharge to work well, and if they’re kept on for too long, their performance suffers.

IT Support from a reliable MSP like Sabio can easily fix computer issues, but these incidents could just as easily be avoided by having your employees develop the habit of rebooting their computers at the end of their day.

Wasting IT resources

Seemingly innocuous habits like printing unnecessary documents, sending email to a large number of recipients, and excessive chatting take up company resources. It’s obvious how wasteful printing increases IT budgets, but excessive digital communications can also add costs by exceeding your data usage limits, slowing down your network, and wasting time.

Ask your IT Provider to use technology to enforce compliance

Policies and procedures are a great start, but using powerful technology to ensure they are followed is even better. Most of the recommendations we’ve mentioned can be enforced via technologies and solutions that Sabio delivers with its Wise Care services, and they’re included in most plans. If you are working with another provider, ask them for assistance in implementing these policies as part of your company’s technology delivery plan.

At Sabio Information Technologies, we go beyond installing the latest anti-malware software and backing up the data of our Florida clients. We act as their business partner, ensuring IT, people and processes work toward making the business more profitable. Get in touch with us and let us know how we can do the same for your business.

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