MSPNetworks Blog

Today, employees have to be a major part of every business’ cybersecurity attempts. The reasoning is simple: attacks are more likely to come in the form of end user correspondence than on a direct assault of the network. As a result, it is important that cybersecurity is more than just another line item on a task list, it has to be built into the culture. Let’s discuss a few ways to get your employees to care about cybersecurity.

Why Is Cybersecurity A Nuisance?

This is not a new phenomenon. Your employees want to be productive. In their minds, any extra tasks that are assigned are a hindrance to that aim. Cybersecurity, in today’s businesses, also has a tendency to intrude on their desire to separate their home life from their work life. While this isn’t really the case in most scenarios, there certainly needs to be some cooperation from them to properly secure your network. 

By now your workers understand that security is extremely important. What they don’t understand is how it is their problem. You hire them to do a job, and for most of them, that job isn’t "security guard." That’s why it is important that cybersecurity is something they are confronted with from the beginning of their employment. It is a culture issue, not just an operational one. Let’s go through some ways you can get your staff to care about cybersecurity.

Remove the Red Tape

Today, a well-executed hack or social engineering attempt can completely devastate a business. In some cases, and this is especially true for smaller businesses, a hack can cause the closure of a business. Those types of events affect more than just the business owners or the stakeholders. 

To ensure that your staff gets just how important this issue is, level with them. You don’t need to keep the threats a secret any longer. A unified approach to cybersecurity requires that your employees know how hackers and scammers will go about trying to trick them into handing over access to the company network. This will not only actively remove the indifference most employees have about cybersecurity, but it will also ensure that they realize how important doing the right things are. 

Make Sure Your Staff is Personally Invested

For the average employee, any indifference they have about a business’ cybersecurity efforts comes from the idea that it doesn’t really have any effect on them. This is not true. Hackers don’t just want access to business information, they want access to the network. That means all of the data on that network. 

Making sure that employees understand that it’s just not company information, it is their personal information and that of their contemporaries. Reminding that their data is at stake might just be the thing needed to get them to take security measures seriously. 

Build Solid Training and Literacy Right Into Your Culture

As we mentioned above, one of the best ways to ensure that your staff understands their role in your organization’s cybersecurity plan is to build it into your culture. To do this, it has to be out in front. You need to mention it in your hiring process (interview, any collateral you use to outline employee responsibilities), it needs to be parsed out properly in your organization’s documentation (employee handbook, etc.), and it has to be something that every person in the business knows that they will be confronted with at some point.

Ensuring that your people don’t get complacent is a massive point of emphasis if you want to keep their cybersecurity literacy ongoing. On top of training, you need to keep up some type of consistent reminder that they are important to organizational efforts to keep hackers and other unauthorized entities off of the business’ network. The more time and effort you put into planning out your cybersecurity training, the more that people will get out of it. 

We Can Help!

Keeping your business from falling victim to a cyberattack takes a lot of effort. Our security professionals are constantly readying ourselves to assist our clients in keeping them free of threats and a lot of that is helping them come up with policies, procedures, and strategies to keep their employees engaged in this never-ending fight against hackers. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today to learn how we can help you protect your business.

The modern office is filled with distractions, and that’s to say nothing about the everyday user’s life. With so many devices and notifications interrupting focus for users all over the world, it’s more important than ever before to have a strategy for how to deal with these issues and become as productive as possible in the workplace. Today, we’ll be discussing some of the biggest distractions in the workplace and how your employees can overcome them.

The Reality
The modern workplace is a shifting environment. If businesses don’t adapt to the changes, they could potentially be left behind by the times, or worse--subject to countless distractions that are a result of this shifting environment. Some of these issues are created by the employer through the use of open-office environments designed to reduce the costs of housing employees in the workplace. While this achieves the desired goal, the end result is often less productivity due to the constant distractions that plague the open office. Employees could find themselves more stressed out and less motivated--not the ideal situation for anyone working for your business.

Some might get the idea that this happens because the employees aren’t trained to thrive in such a busy workplace environment, as evidenced by a poll from Udemy in which 66 percent of respondents claimed so. If you feel your staff suffers from productivity issues, then you should look at the underlying causes of this. Asking them can help you see it from their perspective. You’ll see a lot of the same answers: too much noise, overcrowded office, and even too much technology that they don’t understand. As surprising as this might sound, it’s important to keep it in mind.

Staying Social
Even workers that enjoy working side-by-side with others are finding that there are still ample opportunities to be distracted. Employees have near-constant access to social accounts thanks to your business’ Wi-Fi connection, meaning that you’ll need a content filter and mobile device policy in place to limit how much your employees can access these time-wasting accounts. It’s likely that employees will, more likely than not, see this as a detriment to their personal agenda and not as a benefit to your business or their productivity. While social media can be helpful for marketing and other purposes, it can also lead to users compulsively checking their devices, cutting into productivity.

Distracted Staff
Even the smallest distraction can influence productivity for an extended period of time. Some users can take up to a half-hour or so to refocus on a task. Of course, even periods of time that are supposed to be in the workday for breaks, like lunchtime, can inadvertently create distractions; without them, however, productivity suffers even more. One example of a situation that an employee could consider a distraction is a staff meeting. While they are necessary, they themselves are often full of distractions, and pulling employees away from their work for distraction-filled meetings is sure to both frustrate and stress out your busier employees. If employees suffer from productivity breaks, they might overstress themselves into overproducing to compensate for the time lost. This leads to a lower quality of work performed as a whole. According to Udemy, 34 percent of workers found they like their jobs less when they are distracted, while 22 percent found that this also kept them from professional advancement.

Strategies for Improvement
To create a culture of productivity, you have to create what’s called a learning culture. Basically, you provide training to your employees on how to manage their distractions so they influence productivity as minimally as possible. If employees know how to deal with distractions, they will be more likely to avoid them throughout the workday, and therefore, be more productive. Some of the most common distractions can be addressed in the following manner:

• Too much noise: If the office is a little too noisy for your liking, put on headphones. Even if you’re not listening to any music, it’s likely you’ll be distracted less, as people are generally more considerate about bothering others with headphones on.
• Smartphone access: In recent years, the smartphone has become like your house keys; you don’t leave your house without it. The device is designed around you, and as such, it can be a considerable distraction. By turning off notifications and keeping your phone out of sight, you’ll be more likely to focus on what needs to be done.
• Coworker interactions: While it’s important to develop a good rapport with your coworkers, too much chit-chat can be distracting. Be sure to develop strong signals that you can give them if you’d rather not have a conversation at any given moment.
• Hunger: While the lunch break is certainly a thing, some people need a little extra boost to make it through the morning. If a productivity session is interrupted by your growling stomach, just munch on something small to get you through the next few hours.

If technology is getting in the way of your employees’ productivity, we have a solution for you. To find out more, give MSPNetworks a call at (516) 403-9001.