30 May Want To Prevent Data Breach Threats? Inform The Users!
By Dustin Kinn, Solutions Architect
As a Solutions Architect here at Netrepid, I’m part of a team that provides managed services to a wide variety of small to mid-sized companies. The businesses that we support range from as small as two or three people, all the way through offices with over 100 users.
Their tech support needs are just as wide – a small non-profit might need nothing more than file sharing and remote backup, while a larger corporation can greatly benefit from a hosted desktops and virtual servers.
However, in all of these companies, the greatest threat to data breach always remains the same:
THE UNINFORMED USER
All too often, I encounter clients who don’t know enough to stay secure. In many of these cases, they don’t want to learn, and instead expect that what we have set up is fool proof.
Anyone working today in the technology sector knows that this is an absolute fallacy. Technology is an ever changing and evolving entity, and history is littered with people willing to exploit that. Whenever I complete a job, finish an install, or even just finish a short support call, I do my absolute best to make sure that the client:
- Understands what I’ve done and WHY I did it
- Understands my intentions in trying to educate them
Too many blog posts on the web wax lyrically about phishing, social engineering, cracking, hacking, exploiting, and whatever other word is “hot” these days. But in all of those instances, the user is the weak link.
If we all do a better job of educating the user on what to watch for, babysitting a network becomes a significantly easier task.
